Victor Ramirez – Ovill McKenzie fight to a draw

By Boxing News - 10/02/2015 - Comments

By Tim Fletcher: Making his first defense of his title, a very poor performing IBF cruiserweight champion Victor Ramirez (22-2-1, 17 KOs) was given a controversial 12 round draw against the much superior challenger #14 IBF Ovill McKenzie (25-12-1, 13 KOs) on Friday night in the 31-year-old Ramirez’s first defense of his IBF title at the Villa La Ñata Sporting Club, Benavídez, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The draw means Ramirez retains his IBF cruiserweight title.

The final judges’ scores were 115-113 for Ramirez, 114-114 for McKenzie.
Ramirez was badly outworked by McKenzie in virtually every round of the fight. McKenzie appeared to tire a little bit in the second half of the fight, but he was still able to land countless shots against the slow and plodding Ramirez. It was only occasionally that Ramirez was able to land anything at all in the fight.

McKenzie gave Ramirez boxing lesson in the first seven rounds of the fight. He was jabbing, moving and landing really nice right hands and left hooks. Ramirez was constantly looking for big single shots, and he wasn’t able to land nearly of them to win rounds. At best, Ramirez would land three or four hard shots in a round. It was never enough to say with 100 percent certainty that he won any of the rounds. The rounds that Ramirez did reasonably well in were the 4th, 8th, 9th and 11th. The remainder so rounds were totally dominated by McKenzie.

It’s possible that McKenzie could get a rematch against Ramirez, although I doubt that will happen. It’s more likely that Ramirez will elect to fight another fringe contender before he’s forced to fight his No.1 mandatory challenger.

Ramirez looked really uncoordinated throughout the fight. He was missing wildly and looking like a fighter who’d just taken up the sport. In the 4th round, Ramirez missed a right hand and spun completely around in an amateur move. McKenzie could have nailed Ramirez when he had his back turned but he chose not to. In other occasion in the fight, Ramirez lost his mouthpiece and then he turned his back on McKenzie and picked it up off the canvas and put it back into his mouth. McKenzie could have unloaded on Ramirez when he did this, but he gave him a break. Normally the referee is the one that picks up a fighters’ mouthpiece and then has it washed off by their corner.

You’ve got to feel sorry for the 35-year-old McKenzie because he did more than enough to deserve the win tonight. He did a great job of constantly jabbing the slow and plodding Ramirez and nailing him with combinations. Ramirez just couldn’t let his hands go in the fight. His slow feet kept him from getting to the constantly circling McKenzie with any regularity.

I had McKenzie up six rounds to two after eight rounds. In the last four rounds of the fight, I had both fighters winning two rounds. This meant that McKenzie should have won the fight by an eight rounds to four score.

The International Boxing Federation recently stripped the previous IBF champion Yoan Pablo Hernandez of his title after he failed to defend his title against Victor Ramirez. Hernandez hadn’t defended his IBF title in over a year at the time. Injuries prevented Hernandez from making his annual defense of his title. Where the IBF seems to have slipped up is having Ramirez ranked No.1 rather than one of the arguably much better contenders in the IBF’s top 15 like Rakhim Chakhkiev, Marco Huck, Dmitry Kudryashov and Murat Gassiev. Those fighters would all likely beat Ramirez easily if they were able to get a fight against him. Ramirez was a decent fighters six years ago in 2009, when the cruiserweight division was very weak and without quality fighters. But now that there are a high number of top fighters in the division, Ramirez is badly out of place among those guys. Ramirez didn’t have to beat anyone good to get the No.1 ranking by the IBF. They gave it to him off wins over a past his prime Ola Afolabi, Deon Elam and Cleiton Conceicao. Ramirez’s 12 round decision win over Afolabi was a controversial one because Afolabi appeared to do enough to get the victory. However, in the 11th round, the referee took two points away from Afolabi for low blows. The fight took place in Ramirez’s home country of Argentina.



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