Vergil Ortiz Jr and Eimantas Stanionis appear on track to fulfill the WBA order sent to them, with ESPN.com’s Mike Coppinger reporting that the fight will now take place on March 18 in the Dallas area, where Ortiz is from and has fought many times.
Golden Boy Promotions, Ortiz’s promoter, won the purse bid in December, beating out TGB Promotions (representing the Premier Boxing Champions) by $200,000, with a winning bid of $2.3 million for the bout.
Stanionis (14-0, 9 KOs) is theoretically the “A-side” of the fight, since he holds a “world title,” but it’s the WBA “world” (“regular”) belt, which nobody really cares about, in fairness, and Ortiz (19-0, 19 KOs) not only has a little more value in the name, but he’ll also be in charge of the local draw, and that’s his promoter’s show.
In short, expect this to be billed as “Ortiz vs Stanionis”, not the other way around.
Bigger news than that, in two parts:
- It’s just a good fight between two guys who really could be top five welterweights right now.
- With the WBA making – I say this reluctantly, as it could cease to be true at any moment – a real effort to consolidate their ‘super world’ and ‘world’ titles, the winner of this one will be in line for an order. mandatory against Errol Spence Jr, or would be the ones recognized if/when Spence leaves or goes up or whatever.
The 24-year-old Ortiz’s career looked potentially in trouble with a medical issue in early 2022, but he’s come back from it and looked strong in an August win over Michael McKinson.
Lithuanian Stanionis, 28, is coming off a solid win over Radzhab Buatev last April on the Spence vs Ugas undercard.
