Ryan Garcia has the boxing skills. He has the good looks and the heartthrob status that goes with it (boasting 2.6 million Instagram followers who peep the 20-year-old's every move).
But there’s a reason he’s not alone when Oscar De La Hoya discusses the Golden Boy Promotions' young lions who fit the bill to be the future of the Sweet Science.
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It’s usually Garcia and Vergil Ortiz Jr. whom De La Hoya evokes as world champion-material and beyond. No, Ortiz doesn’t have the 2.6 million IG followers Garcia possesses — he has 20,000 — but the 21-year-old does have grown-man strength. Scary grown-man strength, with a penchant for highly efficient punches and tremendous blunt force.
That combination has Ortiz putting boxing on notice in the super lightweight division. This weekend, Ortiz will look to open even more eyes as he moves up in weight to 147 pounds. There, he'll face Mauricio Herrera in the co-main event to Canelo Alvarez vs. Daniel Jacobs at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday night, live and exclusively on DAZN.
Ortiz and his team insist he’ll be moving back down to 140 pounds following this bout, but that he couldn’t pass up the chance to see what kind of damage he’s capable of at welterweight.
“We understand that he’s at 147 and can’t go any lower than that,” Ortiz told Sporting News of Herrera. “This is the perfect opportunity to test the waters at 147 to see how I feel, so we took it.”
That, and there was no way that Ortiz was going to pass up being the co-main event to Canelo-Jacobs and fighting in front of a packed house at T-Mobile Arena.
“I’ve fought on many Canelo cards before, but usually it’s earlier and not too many people show up,” Ortiz said. “Right before Canelo … I don’t know what it feels like to be fighting in front of so many people. I’m sure I’ll feel excited, hearing all the oohs and ahhs from the crowd.”
He'll likely generate those 'oohs' and 'ahhs' with his mature fighting style, well beyond his 21 years. Ortiz targets and throws punches with hard precision every time. His 12-0 record, all via knockout, will tell you he hits more than he misses.
“My dad has trained me my entire life,” Ortiz said. “When I hit the bag, he makes sure that every, single punch that I throw is a hard punch. Sometimes boxers will throw a punch and it’ll just happen to land. I make sure mine land … and they land good.”
MORE: Alvarez-Jacobs preview, expert pick and betting guidelines
Just as a seasoned rapper won’t waste bars, Ortiz doesn’t waste punches. He doesn’t believe in an uptick of volume just for the sake of having high output for CompuBox. And the Dallas-bred boxer also thanks Mikey Garcia for helping him to learn that discipline.
“Sparring against Mikey Garcia was a big learning experience for me,” Ortiz said of their in-ring sessions last year. “After sparring him for the first time, I felt like I became an entirely new boxer. I felt like I started wasting my punches less, picking them at the right time and not throwing them for no reason.”
A worldwide audience will see if he could use those skills to piece together a convincing win over 38-year-old veteran, Herrera (24-8, 7 KOs), as he did against the likes of Jesus A. Valdez Barrayan, Roberto Ortiz and Juan Carlos Salgado before him.
“This is a big test for Vergil Ortiz Jr.,” De La Hoya said in a statement that Golden Boy sent to SN. “This young man has all that it takes to become a dominant world champion, so it’s only fitting that a prospect like him gets the opportunity to be the co-main event of a Canelo fight.
“If Ortiz Jr. can look spectacular against Herrera, then he will demonstrate what we already know, that he is the real deal.”
For someone vowing to move back down to super lightweight — even if he’s dominant on Saturday night — Ortiz sure has a funny way of going about it.
During the grand arrivals of the fighters Tuesday in Las Vegas, Ortiz just so happened to tell DAZN’s Ak and Barak that “I can beat Keith Thurman,” the WBA welterweight champion. “I know I can.”
Confident talk coming from Ortiz, who told SN he’d also be up for a fight against Danny Garcia in the near future as well. But sticking with the script he and his team have rolled out, Ortiz can think of a more apt future opponent if all goes well against Herrera: WBO super lightweight champion Maurice Hooker.
“I think it’s the perfect fight to make,” Ortiz said. “We’re the same weight, we’re from the same city and we both fight on DAZN, so there’s really no excuse to not make that fight happen.”
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Until then, De La Hoya tabbing Ortiz as a future “dominant world champion” doesn’t intimidate him; it only fuels his hunger.
“It doesn’t put pressure on me at all,” said Ortiz, who believes he’s less than a year away from receiving that world title shot.
“If anything, it makes me more motivated to work hard and keep these wins coming.”
