At one time, leading Soviet boxing experts trained masters of fist fighting in Cuba quite well. Moreover, this contribution to the sports development of the population of the island of Freedom bears great results to this day, since today there are quite a few boxing champions who come from this small and proud country. One of such bright and outstanding fighters, which is worth talking about, is Louis Ortiz. We will consider his fate in detail in this article.
Birth and Facts
Louis Ortiz, whose photo is given in the article, was born on March 29, 1979. In the ring, he is nicknamed "Real King Kong." Nowadays, lives in Miami, Florida, USA. To this day he performs in the heavyweight category and has a rather impressive growth - 193 centimeters. He spent 28 fights in the pro ring, in 26 of which he emerged victorious. At the same time, he won 22 victories by knockout, 2 fights for various reasons were declared invalid.
Amateur Fights
As an amateur, Louis Ortiz spent 362 fights. Of these, in only 19 battles, he experienced the bitterness of defeat. The athlete for a rather long period of time consistently entered the national team of Cuba, but for various reasons, not too often, as the leadership would have liked, appeared under its banner. The fighter won the championship of his country five times, he was also a quarter-finalist of the world championship in China in 2005. In team competitions, he won the silver medal of the World Cup in the same year.
Transition to a new level
For the first time, Louis Ortiz stepped into the ring already in the status of a pro in the winter of 2010, already being a very mature athlete, since at that time he was 30 years old. Already in the debut match, he knocked out his then opponent in the first round.
In November 2010, the Cuban managed to knock out the rather experienced jornimen Zac Page, who had not experienced early lesions for several years. After this victory, our hero won two more early ones.
First title and further career
In the summer of 2011, Luis Ortiz, whose fights usually ended ahead of schedule, was once again able to confirm his status as a knockout and, without any apparent difficulties, took the WBA Fedelatin and WBC FECARBOX belts from the representative of Panama, Luis Anders Pineda.
Six months later, the Cuban won two more belts - WBO Latino and WBC Latino. To do this, he had to defeat Epifanio Mandos. The fight was stopped by the judge in the ring ahead of schedule in the seventh three-minute period.
In September 2014, the battle of Louis Ortiz - Latif Kayode took place. Just thirty seconds after the start gong, the Cuban was able to bring two successful blows to the opponent and send him to the knockdown. And at the end of the round Ortiz squeezed an opponent in the corner of the ring and began to beat him, as a result of which the referee stopped the match, thereby awarding Ortiz with a victory. Thus, the Cuban took the title of interim world leader in the WBA heavyweight division. However, as it turned out a little later, Luis’s joy was very short-lived, since in January 2015 he was deprived of his belt, since he used the drug Nandrolone, which was prohibited by international rules.
After serving a nine-month suspension, the Cuban met in the ring with Byron Polly and knocked him out, and in October 2015 he again won the title of interim champion, defeating Matias Vidondo.
Two months later, the Cuban had to carry out mandatory belt defense in a duel against Bryant Jennings. Louis several times managed to get pretty hard on his opponent, but he managed to quickly recover without getting into a knockdown, which eventually happened, but in the seventh round (the American missed an uppercut). Strong blows missed by the Cuban did their job, and the battle was stopped ahead of schedule.
In the spring of 2016, Louis held another title defense and destroyed U.S. veteran Tony Thompson in the ring .
On the first day of November 2016, Louis Ortiz - a world-famous boxer - was stripped of his title. This decision was made by the World Boxing Association due to the refusal of the Cuban to enter the mandatory defense of the title against Alexander Ustinov from Russia.
However, already on November 12, the Cuban again entered the ring and defeated Malik Scott with a judicial decision, simultaneously sending him knocked down three times during the battle.
On December 10, Ortiz is scheduled to fight with British representative David Allen.