The WBC heavyweight champion will be fighting the heavy-handed Luis Ortiz once again.
No, Deontay Wilder isn’t fighting Anthony Joshua or Tyson Fury next.
Yes, his next fight will be an upgrade over his overmatched WBC mandatory challenger Dominic Breazeale.
Wilder (41-0-1, 40 KOs) announced on Tuesday — this perhaps not coincidentally the week of Anthony Joshua’s US debut against Andy Ruiz Jr — that he and Luis Ortiz have agreed to a rematch of their thrilling March 2018 encounter.
Wilder v Ortiz II
To all my fans,
I want to announce that Luis Ortiz and I have signed for a rematch, with the date and site to be announced shortly.
All my controversial fights
Must get dealt with ASAP??#BombZquad pic.twitter.com/RZs7vLEhaj— Deontay Wilder (@BronzeBomber) May 28, 2019
According to Mike Coppinger, September 28th on Showtime PPV is the plan. It would be Wilder’s second pay-per-view main event, with his maiden one coming last December in his thrilling split draw vs. Tyson Fury.
Wilder is less than two weeks removed from his devastating first-round KO of Dominic Breazeale, despite Breazeale’s insistence that the fight was stopped too early. It was expected that Wilder would rematch Fury instead of take on Breazeale, but when Fury signed with Top Rank/ESPN, that basically blew the whole thing up. Top Rank’s offer to Wilder also did not involve fighting Fury next.
The most danger Wilder has ever been in is against Ortiz, who had him wobbled and hurt in round seven but could not knock him down. From there, Wilder and his vaunted power rallied back and Ortiz found himself dropped twice in the tenth and eventually stopped.
Ortiz (31-1-1-2 NCs, 26 KOs) has won three straight since his loss to Wilder. He stopped Razvan Cojanu and Travis Kauffman consecutively before taking a rather uninspiring ten-round decision over Christian Hammer in March of this year. The Cuban has been a perennial contender, but he is 40 years old, so there’s no guarantee that he’ll have as much success against Deontay as he did the first time.
This is not a bad fight, per se. It’s also not one that the fans want to see the most, which is many major boxing matches in a nutshell. Even more undesirable is the fact that it’s a pay-per-view. The only good thing is that it’s a relatively quick turnaround for Wilder from May to September, but otherwise don’t expect Wilder vs. Joshua or Wilder vs. Fury 2 until 2020… at the earliest.