King Kong looks to make one more run at a world title.
Cuban heavyweight contender Luis “King Kong” Ortiz (29-1, 25 KOs) was the most avoided man in the division for years before he met WBC titleholder Deontay Wilder for his first title shot back in March. Ortiz fought really well too as expected. He controlled the early rounds at a slow pace and almost had Wilder out on his feet in round seven despite getting hurt and dropped himself in the fifth. The big win would not come, however, as the ridiculous power of the American titleholder flattened Luis for good in the tenth. This was not without some controversy either as many considered Wilder to have been given extra time to recover in the eighth when a doctor stepped in to examine him.
Since then Ortiz has fought once against clearly overmatched Romanian regional level heavyweight Razvan Cojanu, predictably finishing the mismatch early. He has been angling for a fight with Dillian Whyte, but that never seemed likely to be something that made a whole lot of sense to Eddie Hearn overseas. Instead it looks like he will get another mismatch against strong but limited fellow PBC heavyweight Travis Kauffman (32-2, 23 KOs) on the undercard of Deontay Wilder’s highly anticipated title defense against lineal champion Tyson Fury on December 1st. Hopefully the all but predestined knockout win here sets Luis Ortiz back up for another big fight rather than returning him to the hell of not being able to secure major matchups.
Kauffman is a layup. He lost to a past his prime Chris Arreola in 2015, though that one got overturned because of a drug test. He dropped another fight last year to Amir Mansour too. Those two are decent heavyweights on their best days, at least, but Scott Alexander is not. Though Travis did not lose to him, he barely scraped by on the cards in June over the journeyman and had to get off the canvas to do it. This is a massive mismatch. To be frank, it is a pretty disappointing use of a Wilder-Fury undercard slot. The show isn’t a shoe in to sell well by any means. It could certainly use better support to nudge the numbers up a bit. This won’t move the needle at all, nor should it.
Ortiz-Kauffman is not signed and delivered yet officially, so this could still change. It isn’t expected to though.
