Junior middleweight contender Vergil Ortiz Jr. is willing to run it back against his old amateur rival Ryan Garcia but is focusing on his next opponent Serhii Bohachuk.
Ortiz and Garcia were recently involved in an online spat about a potential fight with each other. Garcia has called out multiple fighters since his contest with Devin Haney at junior welterweight in April and seems to be planning a move up to 154 pounds after calling out Errol Spence and now Ortiz. However, the fighter will have to wait for an encounter against either of the pair after he was handed a one-year ban from the sport due to testing positive for the performance-enhancing drug ostarine.
Meanwhile, Ortiz’s attention is firmly on his next opponent Bohachuk, who he will be hoping to gain the WBC interim title against. The now junior middleweight has made an outstanding start to life in the division since his move up from welterweight. Although his focus is on his next opponent, Ortiz said that he would be willing to entertain a fight with Garcia but admitted that the possibility of a fight is not on his mind at present.
“It can happen, not anytime soon because he’s fucking banned,” Ortiz told Fight Hub TV. “As far as I know, that's not even on my mind right now. I don’t know what to expect from him, I really don’t. I’m just going to focus on what’s 100%, we’ve got a fight in front of me, we’ve got other fights lined up potentially if things go well. I’m just going to focus on me, I don’t focus on anyone else anymore.”
Garcia recently defeated his old amateur rival Haney, but the victory was chalked off his record due to failed drug tests. He now seems set on defeating another enemy from the unpaid ranks after he faced Ortiz on multiple occasions as an amateur. Garcia claims that the pair fought three times in their younger days, with him winning all three fights clearly. Ortiz denies this, however, and is more than happy to run it back as professionals.
“We’ve fought twice, I don’t know where he’s getting the third fight from,” Ortiz added. “We fought one time in 2009, when we were 11 years old. He beat me, but we were fucking 11, they’re counting punches, all these little digs as points. Then we fought in like 2014 or 2015, I mean yeah, we were older, like 16, something like that. I lost a 2:1 split decision, one judge thought I won, I thought I won. Bring up the past all you want, I’m not the one bringing up the past, I’m not salty about it, but I will correct you, you didn’t beat my ass, it was a close fight. We didn’t fight three times, we fought twice, one of them, we were 11 years old. He’s the one bringing up the past – if he wants to run it, we can run it.”
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