Victor Ortiz was an emerging boxing star: a mediagenic Mexican-American who usually won by knockout, and almost always smiled during his pre- and post-fight interviews. Then, three years ago, he was beaten up by Marcos Maidana, a previously obscure fighter from Argentina. (Maidana had never before fought in America.) The fight had been close, and exciting, but in the fifth round, Maidana punched open an eyebrow-sized cut above Ortiz’s right eye, and as the sixth began, Ortiz seemed to be losing interest. Maidana knocked him down, and although Ortiz quickly jumped to his feet, his shoulders were slumping. Raul Caiz, Sr., the referee, said, “You O.K., son?” Ortiz shook his head and walked away, which meant the fight was over. Ortiz was declared the loser, by technical knockout.

Afterward, Ortiz was smiling again. Asked why he had given up, he suggested that he was worried about brain damage. “I’m going to stop while I’m ahead, and that way, I can speak well when I’m older,” he said. On the subject of his career, he sounded uncertain. “We’ll see what happens from here on out, man,” he said. “I’m young, but I don’t think I deserve to be getting beaten up like this. So I have a lot of thinking to do.”

Everything he said sounded reasonable, but none of it endeared him to boxing fans, who interpreted the interview as proof that Ortiz wasn’t tough—or reckless—enough to be great. Boxing is an unreasonable sport, and it needs unreasonable fighters to satisfy its unreasonable fans. Apparently, Ortiz didn’t qualify.

Over the next few years, Ortiz worked to rebuild his reputation. Last year, after winning an explosive fight against Andre Berto, Ortiz earned his reward: a chance to fight Floyd Mayweather, one of the sport’s biggest stars. The fight was a disaster—after a few frustrating rounds, Ortiz head-butted Mayweather, and then, while Ortiz was trying to apologize, Mayweather knocked him out. The head-butt was intentional, and the knockout came after the fight had resumed, so no one felt too sorry for Ortiz. He seemed, once again, like an accomplished athlete who just didn’t quite feel, or act, like a boxer.

Saturday night was supposed to be Ortiz’s comeback: a relatively easy fight, held in Los Angeles and broadcast on Showtime, against a scrappy Mexican-American named Josésito López. Ortiz is, almost despite himself, great fun to watch: he punches with anger, and often gives his opponent opportunities to punch him back. And for eight rounds, Ortiz worked hard to build a lead. (He also delivered one particularly flagrant illegal blow, punching López on the back of the head.) Then, at the end of a spirited ninth, Ortiz retreated, sprinting away from López in the round’s final seconds.

With three rounds left, Ortiz sat in his corner and considered his options. He felt sure that, during the ninth round, López had broken his jaw. And so, as the bell was struck to start the tenth, he gestured for the referee, Jack Reiss.

“My jaw’s broken,” Ortiz said.

“Your what’s broken?” Reiss asked. “Your jaw? Are you stopping the fight?”

The answer to this last question wasn’t obvious—a broken jaw need not mean the end of a fight. In 2006, a stout puncher named Arthur Abraham got his jaw broken in the fourth round; he somehow survived and won. But Ortiz is, despite his occupation, a boxing skeptic—instead of blindly following the sport’s exorbitant moral code, he reserves the right to make his own calculations.

During his post-fight interview, he seemed to be having trouble closing his mouth, or forming consonants, and he was spitting blood. As usual, he was more honest than he needed to be. “My coaches wanted me to keep going,” he said. (A less ingenuous boxer would probably insist, contrary to any available evidence, that he had wanted to go on fighting, and that his trainer had prevented him.) “It was kind of tough,” he said. “I couldn’t close my mouth. It kept hurting, every time he kept touching me.”

In the ring, López celebrated his surprise victory—by far the biggest win of his career, in by far his biggest fight. Meanwhile, Showtime’s cameras followed Ortiz out of the ring and into his dressing room, where he examined his mouth in the mirror and then dropped to his knees, resting his forehead on a table. He doesn’t deserve to be getting beaten up like this—no fighter does. The difference is, Ortiz knows it, and can’t seem to forget it.

Photograph by Jeff Gross/Getty Images for Golden Boy Promotions.