Fight Hub TV<\/a>, Ortiz\u2019s trainer Robert Garcia explained why Ortiz will now permanently campaign as a middleweight, ruling out a long-awaited clash with Ennis, which could have been for the undisputed title, at least until \u2018Boots\u2019 also moves up to the 160lb scene.<\/p>\n\u201cWhen we learned that Boots is unifying and then that [Sebastian] Fundora also has a date, I know for a fact that they are both going to want to go for undisputed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing that they both have a fight coming up and that their next fight could then be against each other for undisputed \u2013 which would probably be towards the summer or end of next year \u2013 then that puts us [in a position where we must] wait for the winner, maybe for another year.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, we just made the decision to just campaign at 160lbs. Waiting for that is too much for Vergil, he would have to work so hard to make 154lbs and then to have to wait for another year.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that 160 is the perfect weight for Vergil and I think that, eventually, both Fundora and Boots will move up to 160 anyways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ortiz is expected to debut in the middleweight division against former unified welterweight world champion, Keith Thurman<\/a>, with that bout anticipated to act as the co-main event on the mooted Benavidez-Cieslak card on Saturday, December 5, in Phoenix, Arizona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vergil Ortiz is yet to fight in 2026, but the Texan is poised to end his inactivity soon.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-801179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}