Vergil Ortiz will defend his WBO International welterweight title against Egidijus Kavaliauskas this Saturday, and former world champion Sergio Mora believes he will face his toughest test yet.
Mora noted that while Ortiz has generally been able to dismiss previous opponents in the early rounds, he thinks his Lithuanian opponent has the capacity to go the distance - which poses its own problems.
Speaking on JABS as part of the DAZN Boxing Show, Mora said of the fight that: “I want to see discipline and I want to see how he's gonna react in the second half of the fight.
“Ortiz has knocked out everyone put in front of him in under seven rounds. I don't think this is gonna be the case with the Mean Machine. When it comes to Kavaliauskas his only loss is Bud Crawford.
“He's a compact, strong fighter, big overhand right, you must have those 80s He-Man toys or little GI Joe with an elastic band, which is really like this, the left and right hooks.
“And if you're too aggressive with the shots, they can come under or over the top, which is what he did with Crawford. So this is going to be a fight where Ortiz is gonna have to carry it to the second half of the fight, and I wanna see how he’s gonna react.”
Mora wondered if going to the later rounds would unsettle Ortiz.
“Whenever you've been in this game a long time we've seen our punches, and in the first half of the fight their power gets them, you know enough, they do enough damage,” he began.
“But when it comes to the later rounds, the championship rounds, when you're dealing with fighters who have already been here. They've been on the championship level, like Mean Machine. They're not going to go anywhere in seven rounds. Maurice Hooker, very experienced.
"He was touching majorities in the last fight, but he wasn't able to make it out of that seven, and Samuel Vargas... it was a one-sided beating of him, but he'd been on the top level as well. So they're moving Ortiz in the right direction, but we need to feel he’s going to react in those championship rounds.”