Also in that article it says...
“I offered to fight Ortiz years ago, but he didn’t want to know. He didn’t even want to know this summer and asked for silly money coming off his knockout loss to Wilder, and made it clear that he wouldn’t be ready for July 28, which was the date we had available,” said Whyte.
“Funnily enough it didn’t stop him fighting someone else on that day.”
Then said for Whyte to cancel his show and fight on an undercard which he knew was impossible to happen.
The article title is misleading because of bias media, trying to spin a narrative, the content within even lends credence to what I said.
Ortiz didn’t actually “accept” anything, he said he would in an interview, while actually rejecting the offers. Furthermore it says in the article his manager told him no and didn’t want him to take the fight. A very similar thing happened with the Anthony Joshua situation where they were offered the fight then rejected it then tried to paint a false narrative, were gonna get exposed with proof so had to admit it was their fault then. Now a case could be made Ortiz was willing but his management didn’t allow him but at some point a fighter has to take responsibility also for his career and you normally look at a person by their history. Ortiz after so many fights and the age he is his opposition level has largely been awful and he’s never beaten a world class fighter, best win is Jennings who is decent but not elite at all.
Ortiz was never the man at amateur or pro, he built a reputation by being a good solid fighter that beat mostly very low level opposition but didn’t get in the ring with truly great fighters, 1 time he did got knocked out. He is a myth, that being said I do respect him as a good boxer and solid and he’s tough, he’s not terrible at all but he’s not some supreme killer and he has a very poor resume quality of opponents wise. You compare him to someone like AJ for example and in only 23 or whatever fights he has Parker, Wlad, Povetkin, Whyte, Breazeale, Martin, Takam, Molina, Johnson on his record. 4 of those would be Ortiz’s best win if he’d beaten them, arguably 7. Ortiz should have fought Povetkin, Povetkin probably would have beat him, he’s had a far more successful career than Ortiz has and been at a higher level. They should still do that fight, he’s getting older now so Ortiz may have a chance and finally get another good name on his record.