By Dan Ambrose: 2nd tier Russian fighter Maxim Vlasov (30-2, 15 KOs) was supposed to have been someone who would give unbeaten #2 WBA, #2 WBC, #2 WBO super middleweight contender Gilberto Ramirez (31-0, 24 KOs) a minor test and make him look good last Saturday night in their fight on the Mike Alvarado vs. Brandon Rios card at the 1stBank Center, in Broomfield, Colorado, USA.
After all, the 23-year-old Ramirez was thought to be someone who could soon be challenging WBA 168lb champion Andre Ward for his title, and then from there eventually taking over the division.
Unfortunately for Ramirez, he was badly exposed by Vlasov to be a fighter with poor defensive skills, poor stamina and not much in the way of offensive skills either when you ignore all the body punching he did.
The 23-year-old Ramirez won the fight by a 10 round unanimous decision by the scores of 97-93, 96-94 and 98-92. The 96-94 scores were the more accurate scores for what happened in the fight. But the heavily hyped Ramirez had built up to be another Saul “Canelo” Alvarez type fighter, but instead we saw that Alvarez didn’t look to be even at the same level as Edwin Rodriguez, a fighter that Ward easily defeated in his last fight in November of 2013.
Ramirez looked so bad against Vlasov that Top Rank is going to seriously consider keeping Ramirez away from all the top fighters in the super middleweight division unless they’re good with watching him lose. He’s just not ready right now to take on the best fighters, and I’m not sure that he’s going to improve enough to ever be ready. The gangly 6’2” Ramirez is all legs and arms, and just so easy to hit that it’s not even funny.
Ramirez landed a lot of body punches in the fight, but his power upstairs was no impressive. At the same time he kept getting hit cleanly by hard shots from Vlasov. Of the two, Vlasov landed the cleaner shots to the head, and he definitely had Ramirez hurt in the 10th after nailing him with a right hand.
With the way Ramirez punches, I’m not sure he’ll ever develop the kind of power he needs to throw head shots. And his hand-eye coordination isn’t what it needs to be for him to become a good defensive fighter. He doesn’t see the shots coming and he doesn’t block them or lean away from them like you normally would see for someone ranked as high as Ramirez.
The Ramirez-Vlasov fight took place at a catch-weight of 171 pounds rather than 168, and that makes you wonder as well if Ramirez is going to be soon having problems making 168.
Ward, who worked the fight for HBO, had few good things to say about Ramirez in the fight. He said “Ramirez has really leaky defense. He’s great on offense but he has to realize things are coming back. He showed tonight that he has only one speed and couldn’t go to another level to take out Vlasov tonight.”
Ramirez suffered a lot of swelling under his left eye that looked ugly to look at.
After the fight, Ramirez kept his back to the HBO cameras which was interesting. Did he do that on purpose to hide the swelling that the 2nd tier Vlasov did to him or was this just an accident?
“It was a very hard fight, but the difference was my body shots,” Ramirez said via ESPN.com. “Every time I threw a combination, I always ended it with a shot to the body, and that was the difference in the fight. He was a hard fighter for me. I’m glad I got the win.”
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