Vergil Ortiz ended his last fight with a knockout win and in hopes of next facing Terence Crawford, the unbeaten welterweight titlist who had a ringside view for the occasion.

That fight won’t come next nor likely by year’s end. Rather than bide his time waiting out a title fight, Ortiz instead chooses to send a message. With that came the decision to next face Egidijus ‘Mean Machine’ Kavaliauskas (22-1-1, 18KOs), a two-time Olympian for Lithuania and former title challenger.

“This is a good fight for me,” Ortiz told krikya360.com. “If I was going to get Crawford next, a fight with Mean Machine still puts me on that same path.

“It’s definitely a good step-up fight, to get me ready for that and ensure that I get the win (over Crawford).”

The bout with Kavaliauskas takes place this Saturday, live on DAZN from Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas. The event is minutes from Ortiz’s hometown of Grand Prairie, as was his last fight when he stopped Maurice Hooker in the seventh round this past March at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth.

Crawford (37-0, 28KOs) was on hand for Ortiz’s last win, showing up to support his training stablemate in Hooker. Ortiz seized the moment to directly call out the WBO welterweight titlist, though without a fight coming of the development.

Crawford has instead been ordered to next face former two-time welterweight titleholder Shawn Porter, while Ortiz (17-0, 17KOs) made a point to seek out the best available contender for his next fight.

It led to Kavaliaukas, an established contender whose lone loss came in a ninth-round stoppage to Crawford in December 2019.

Kavaliauskas has since rebounded with an eighth-round stoppage of Michael Zewski last September in Las Vegas, a fight he took with the intention of returning to the title stage. The division’s title picture is jammed up at the moment, with three of the four major titles at the weight (WBC/IBF champ Errol Spence, WBA titlist Yordenis Ugas) all on the line in separate bouts as part of a Fox Sports Pay-Per-View event taking place next weekend at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

That leaves the rest of the division to either choose to stay active or sit and wait for a title shot that is hardly guaranteed.

The 23-year-old Ortiz is at the point in his career where he can’t afford to remain on the shelf any longer than necessary. So, the plan remains to continue to test himself in the ring until one of the division’s title claimants is ready to step in his direction. It was the thought process in entering a fight with Hooker and again in securing the services of the well-credentialed Kavaliauskas.

“Hooker has experience, Mean Machine definitely has experience,” notes Ortiz. “Mean Machine, I believe is a little bit stronger. He—he got stopped by Crawford, but he didn’t get knocked out. He didn’t get stopped because of a weak chin. It says a lot about Crawford that he was able to stop him. He’s just a tough all-around fighter.”

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for krikya360.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox