Manuel Ortiz

Manuel Ortiz
Data
Birth Name	Manuel Ortiz
Weight class	Bantamweight
nationality	US-american
birthday	July 2, 1916
place of birth	El Centro
Date of death	May 31, 1970
Place of death	San Diego
style	Left delivery
size	1.63 m
Combat Statistics
Struggles	130
Victories	98
Knockout victories	52
Defeats	29
draw	3

Manuel Ortiz (born July 2, 1916 in El Centro , California , † May 31, 1970 in San Diego ) was an American boxer who was the bantamweight world champion in the 1940s. He is not related to Carlos Ortiz .

career

At the age of 19, Ortiz attended an amateur fighting event, stepped in spontaneously when an opponent failed and won. He began seriously training for an amateur career and achieved respectable success as a flyweight. Among other things, he won the Golden Gloves of California .

The hard hitting half-distance specialist Ortiz made his professional bantamweight debut in 1938 and lost on points. After a year his record was 17 wins and nine losses (all on points, he had a world class chin). In the further course of his career he beat strong opponents such as Tony Olivera, Little Pancho and Jackie Jurich.

On August 7, 1942, he won the world bantamweight title by winning points against Lou Salica. He defended the belt fifteen times over the next five years, even though he lost a non-title bout to the taller (featherweight) Willie Pep in 1944 . In 1943 alone he made eight successful title defenses. He finally had to hand over the world championship belt to Harold Dade in January 1947.

However, he won the direct rematch just two months later and made another four defenses, against Kui Kong Young, Tirso Del Rosario, Memo Valero and Dado Marino. During this period, however, fell the only premature loss of his career, when the non-title fight against Manny Ortega was canceled due to eye injuries.

In 1950 he finally lost the crown to the South African Vic Toweel. It was not until 1955 that he ended his career at the age of 42, in which he recorded 98 wins, three draws and 29 defeats.

He is considered one of the best bantamweights of all time by Ring Magazine and is named in the same breath as Éder Jofre , Rubén Olivares , Carlos Zárate and Panama Al Brown .

Web links

• Manuel Ortiz in the BoxRec database