Professional boxer Vergil Ortiz Jr. is standing in the serene, swanky lobby of a five-star hotel in late February. He orders a cup of coffee, his bruised face looking slightly out of place amid the gold accents.
It’s the morning after the 27-year-old won a career-defining fight against Israil Madrimov. After 12 rounds, Ortiz Jr. retained his World Boxing Council interim super welterweight title. For the unfamiliar, at 154 pounds, “The Texas Machine” is widely regarded as the division’s top fighter; reporters have called his technique “relentless” and “thrilling.”
If this was another city — say Las Vegas or even his hometown of Grand Prairie, Texas — Ortiz Jr. might have been mobbed by throngs of fans.
Instead, we’re in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, thousands of miles away in a very different desert. Still, he’s wearing a black baseball cap embroidered with the word “Dallas.”
Ortiz Jr. is following a well-defined path blazed by legendary professional boxer and promoter Oscar De La Hoya, the charming and handsome Mexican-American superstar. He will take on a tough test on Saturday, Nov. 8, when he must defend the interim WBC super welterweight title in a fight against Erickson Lubin at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth.
“Vergil Ortiz Jr. is the most ducked fighter in boxing — period,” De La Hoya, now Golden Boy Promotions CEO, said in a recent news release. “Big names talk tough until Vergil’s name comes up, then suddenly the phone goes silent. I commend Erickson Lubin; he has the guts that these fighters nowadays lack.”
De La Hoya blazed the trail with Hollywood looks, charm, and fluency in both Spanish and English. He was also deep-feeling: De La Hoya locked himself in a room after his mother died in 1990, refusing to talk to anyone. He was just 17 years old. Then he channelled his grief into the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, where he earned gold for Team USA. His story grabbed international and national recognition. It also launched a massively successful boxing career.
He was ringside for Ortiz Jr.’s victory in Riyadh, which I covered for Sports Illustrated.
Ortiz Jr. will be the next generation of this phenomenon, as his profile builds with every fight. Yet, he breaks the mold in many ways: In conversations, he’s one of the most thoughtful fighters of this century.
His tempo is different. The false bravado and aggressiveness often necessary for selling a fight isn’t there with Ortiz Jr. Instead, Ortiz Jr. has the quiet confidence of an old Texas gunslinger who knows he can both talk the talk and walk the walk.
But while many a-fighter has quotable opinions on boxing, Ortiz Jr.’s are interesting far outside of the squared circle. He plays guitar and dabbles in piano. He writes music. He listens to heavy metal; his favorite guitarist is Randy Rhoads.
In Saudi Arabia, he tells me his hobbies include reading, mathematics, and space. He tells me he listens to audiobooks while stuck in traffic. He has a passion for muscle cars.
Of course, like any other young man of his generation, he plays video games like “Call of Duty” and “Rocket League.” Boxing games frustrate him because the tactics don’t align with those necessary to succeed in the ring, he says. Oftentimes, though, he quits for long-periods of time.
“Why am I playing these games?” he asks himself. “I could be learning something.”
In that marbled lobby in Saudi Arabia, Ortiz Jr. passes a veritable glen of mini palm trees, where he runs into Mauricio Sulaimán, the President of the World Boxing Council — one of boxing’s alphabet soup sanctioning organizations and a scion of one of Mexico’s great Lebanese families.
They chat, not about boxing, but about music. Sulaimán, who is a massive AC/DC fan, has seen Vergil Ortiz Jr.’s guitar videos. They joke about one day jamming together.
“We have a plan to one day meet together and maybe play together,” Sulaimán tells me.
The two men also share an incredible path to success blazed by their fathers. The elder José Sulaimán forged the World Boxing Council into the most dynamic of boxing’s sanctioning organizations.
“The relationship with the WBC and its champions is more than just boxing,” Sulaimán says. “It’s always personal. It’s like a family. His father is a great inspiration to him just like my father was a great inspiration to me.”
Vergil Ortiz Sr. is one of his son’s best trainers. He got his son involved in boxing at the age of five. “It was just in him,” Ortiz Sr. told The Athletic. “I’d take him with me and he’d train hard every day, to the point that some days he’d come home and go flat to sleep.”
Ortiz Jr. went on to hold a 140-20 record and win a Junior Olympic gold medal, not to mention becoming a seven-time national champion.
His success has, of course, continued into the professional ranks, where he holds an impressive undefeated record 23 wins and no losses. He is a powerful fighter, with 21 of those wins coming by knockout.
A knockout was never on the cards when he faced Israil Madrimov, a tough-as-they-come fighter from Uzbekistan, in Saudi Arabia. Ortiz Jr. saw his opponent fading just enough in the second half to assert himself and win the rounds.
“A lot of fans think that he won the rounds; he hardly landed anything,” he says afterward. “He was trying to get around my gloves…I felt I was in control.”
Madrimov was a hard fighter who was given multiple warnings for throwing the shoulder repeatedly. But Ortiz Jr. was sanguine about the rough house tactics that left his face pink and purple, with a brutal cut over his left eye and another on his nose.
“He’s not a dirty fighter,” says Ortiz Jr. “Maybe a little sloppy.”
Ortiz Jr. shrugs off the bloodshed with the same composure that has defined his rise. He’s battled not just opponents, but serious health scares — including rhabdomyolysis, which once threatened his career. His calm seems hard-won.
In a sport where social media jabs are increasingly as sharp as those in the ring, Ortiz Jr. has learned to tune out distractions and instead view each setback as another round to endure and overcome.
Last Sunday, he shared a screenshot on X of a DM in which a fan wrote, “DIE BITCH.”
Another said, “YOU GETTING KO AND I HOPE YOU END UP AT THE HOSPITAL.”
In response, Ortiz Jr. wrote, “This is why, at the end of the day, I will always do what’s best for me. I stopped caring about what y’all said and what y’all think about me a long time ago.”
Ahead of the weekend’s fight, Ortiz Jr. is focused not on fans, but on Erickson Lubin.
Lubin, who’ll face Ortiz Jr. on Saturday, is 27-2 with 19 wins by knockout. One of those knockouts was a stoppage of Jorge Cota in which Lubin bends his knees and then springs up to close the distance and drops his opponent with a reaching punch.
Lubin’s two losses shouldn’t fool anyone into thinking this will be an easy fight. He’s on a three-fight win streak. His last loss was a 2022 war with Sebastian Fundora in which both fighters were dropped and at points Lubin appeared to be winning. It was a minor classic in the 154 pound division.
“It’s going to be one of those real historical matchups,” Lubin told The Ring magazine. “After this fight, they won’t be talking about Vergil. They’re going to be talking about The Hammer.”
A victory over Lubin would build Ortiz Jr.’s stature and lead to bigger fights down the road. In the present era, many fighters are tempted to take the short-cut with fights against non-boxer celebrities. (See: Jake Paul.)
Floyd Mayweather, a former undefeated welterweight champion, is considering a fight against former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in 2026. Surely, that’s less about sport and more about spectacle.
By contrast, Ortiz Jr. makes it clear his heart is in old-school pugilism. He has a maturity beyond his years inside the ring and out — and at times a self-effacing humility.
“The only exhibition I would entertain would be something like me vs Magnus Carlsen in chess boxing, but he’s getting 10 seconds on the clock and I’m getting the full 10 minutes 😭,” he said in a post on X referencing the Norwegian chess great.
Considering the emojis, that was probably a joke, though chess boxing is a very real thing.
There are only a handful of boxers who are even familiar with chess players like Magnus Carlsen. It’s spot on, however, for one of the most thoughtful fighters of this era.
It is entirely coincidental that Vergil Ortiz Jr. shares a name with Virgil, the famed Latin poet whose famed epic “Aeneid” became the founding document of the Roman Empire.
But as Ortiz Jr. builds his own empire one punch at a time, he may find one particular line from the Aeneid to be comforting.
“Mens agitat molem,” also known as “mind over matter.”
It’s pure sports psychology from 2000 years ago, but it somehow fits the very modern Vergil Ortiz Jr.
