Ramos-Rigondeaux, Matthysse-Ortiz on Friday

By William Mackay: This Friday night there will be two fairly decent fights in different venues with interim WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (8-0, 6 KO’s) facing WBA World super bantamweight champion Rico Ramos (20-0, 11 KO’s) at the Palms Casino Resort, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Rigondeaux, 31, is having his career pushed ahead at lightning speed because of his extensive amateur background which saw Rigondeaux win two gold medals in the Olympics and compete in 400 amateur fights. Rigondeaux has the experience but now all he needs is to do is show that he duplicate those same results in the pro ranks.

He’d been looking good up until his fight against Ricardo Cordoba in November 2010. Rigondeaux struggled badly against the Panamanian Cordoba and was lucky to scrape out a close 12 round split decision win. In fairness to Rigondeaux, Cordoba has excellent skills, power and was a former interim WBA super bantamweight champion. It wasn’t as if he was a nobody and gave Rigondeaux the fight of his career. In his next fight, Rigondeaux looked good in beating an overmatchd Willie Casey last March. Unfortunately for Rigondeaux, that was his only fight in 2011.

Ramos, 24, recently captured the World Boxing Association title with a 7th round TKO win over champion Akifumi Shimoda last July in an impressive performance. Other than that fight, Ramos doesn’t have a lot of experience against quality opponents.

It’s a tossup who’ll win this Friday between these two guys. Rigondeaux has got the technical skills and the counter punching ability to get the job done, but he struggled against the speed and power of Cordoba. Ramos could give him the same kinds of problems and wear him down in the second half of the fight. Rigondeaux is a much less effective fighter in the later rounds compared to early in his fights.

Also on Friday night; light welterweight contender Lucas Matthysse (29-2, 27 KO’s) fights at home in Argentina against Silverio Ortiz (23-13, 11 KO’s) at the Nuevo Palacio Aurinegro, Puerto Madryn, Chubut, Argentina.

Matthysse, 29, needs to turn things around on his career. He’s been beaten recently twice and he can’t afford another loss. Ortiz isn’t much of a threat to Matthysse but you never know because may have had his confidence shaken by his losses to Zab Judah and Devon Alexander.

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