Not enough footage of Ortiz for me to accurately say, and in the footage that does exist, he looks quality, but doesn't exactly blow me away like a young Jofre or Olivares. I feel more comfortable taking Zarate.
Ortiz strikes me as a really working man's fighter. On the footage we have, he looks like he's a strong, granite jawed Mexican fighter who's took his time to build his skills to a world level standard, and grinded his ass off to have inhuman stamina. Unfortunately for him, that seems to be the exact sort of fighter who Zarate would thrive on. And even more unfortunately for Manuel, is that he likely had the chin to go the distance. I think Zarate mutilates him over fifteen if I'm honest. Could be absolute carnage or an absolute war. So while I find Ortiz one of the most underrated BWs ever, and Zarate to be the most overrated (literally bar none), I think Zarate has to be picked as the winner here. I suppose someone could argue he'd out-work Carlos and take his best punch enroute to a decision, but I just don't see it.
There just is not anywhere near enough film of Ortiz to say how he’d match up with Zarate. The one fight where we have extended footage of him in his prime is against an opponent 5 inches shorter than Ortiz and 9 inches shorter than Zarate. I don’t need to explain myself any further.
In general, I think Manny's lack of big power or physical advantages would be his undoing against fellow ATGs like Zarate.
He was pretty much the same size as Lupe Pintor. Probably just as big a puncher, too, though their respective KO ratios will suggest otherwise. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that Ortiz was fed to the lions early and never left that cage. He certainly stopped many more quality opponents than Pintor did, and in higher stakes fights. This is all mainly conjecture with such limited footage, but he’s clearly shown to be a vicious body puncher at the very least:
For what it is worth, kikibalt picked Ortiz as the best bantamweight that he ever saw, and he saw Zarate, Olivares, etc...when they fought in LA. For my part, I loved Zarate and Ortiz is a SoCal native, born about 20 miles from me, so he's someone that has always interested me but I haven't seen much of him. The singer Sammy Hagar wrote in his autobiography that his father boxed Ortiz several times, in amateur fights I think. The Home Gardens varrio in Corona, California, where Ortiz was born and raised, barely exists any more. As Corona went grew, it killed off the areas that gave it character in favor of strip malls and tract homes.
