Vergil Ortiz Jnr's trainer, Robert Garcia, admits his fighter will be under pressure to outperform Sebastian Fundora's six-round dismantling of Keith Thurman when he faces the 37-year-old in December.

It was announced this week that Ortiz will return to the ring after reconciling with his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, earlier this year. Ortiz will face former unified welterweight champion Thurman at 160lbs on December 5 in Glendale, Arizona, in the chief support to David Benavidez's cruiserweight unification with Michael Cieslak.

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The matchup has attracted criticism after Thurman was stopped convincingly by WBC junior middleweight champion Fundora in March. Garcia, however, believes that result places additional pressure on Ortiz, who will have been out of the ring for more than a year by the time he faces Thurman.

“That's the thing that a lot of people might not see and notice that when you're going against somebody like Thurman, who just looked pretty bad, he got stopped, he got hurt pretty bad against Fundora, then it puts not only Vergil, but ourselves, trainers, we have to know that we have to go out there and perform better than Fundora,” Garcia told BoxingScene Today.

“That's also going to be pressure for us, for Vergil, that we have to go out there and we can't allow Thurman to even put up a fight, because if he does, then everybody's going to be comparing the differences between Fundora and Vergil. Vergil himself has that in mind that he's got to go out there and perform and take care of business the way Fundora did or even faster than that.”