By Dan Ambrose: In what could be a future boxing champion in the super middleweight division, #2 WBA, #2 WBO, #3 IBF, #3 WBA Gilberto Ramirez (29-0, 23 KOs) will be fighting next month on November 15th in a scheduled 10 round bout against 37-year-old journeyman Fulgencio Zuniga (27-9-1, 24 KOs) in a fight on HBO Latino at the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas, USA.

Zuniga, 37, used to be a pretty decent fighter many years ago, but he’s clearly not at this point in his late career. He’s lost 5 out of his last 8 fights and he’s now more of a trial horse for the young contenders to sharpen their claws on.

He’s not someone that will tell is anything about whether the 6′ 2½″ Ramirez has the kind of talent to become a world champion. The only thing this fight is going to tell us is whether the 23-year-old Ramirez can beat a fighter that guys like James DeGale, Kelly Pavlik, Lucian Bute, Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam, Thomas Oosthuizen, Tavoris Cloud, and Denis Inkin have all beaten.

Ramirez is easy to hit, and that’s something that could be his downfall in the future. He’s too easy to hit, and you can’t put him in with guys like Carl Froch, Arthur Abraham, Andre Ward or Anthony Dirrell right now until he’s able to fix his defense.

There’s a possibility that Ramirez may never develop the skills on defense to become a world champion, but he’s definitely got the youth on his side. If Ramirez is able to wait out guys like Ward, Froch, Dirrell and Abraham then he has a chance of becoming a champion during a weak era in the 168 pound division, but right now he’s clearly not ready at all.

The sanctioning bodies have put Ramirez in a position where he’s going to need to challenge for a world title sooner rather than later if he wants to keep his high ranking, because they’ve got him ranked very high despite the fact that he’s not fought anyone good yet.

You’ll still be able to say that after his fight against Zuniga, because this guy is not ranked in the top 15. It would be good to see what Ramirez actually has by seeing him go up against the likes of James DeGale, George Groves, Andre Dirrell and J’Leon Love, because fans would be able to see if he’s for real or not or just some fighter that Top Rank is trying to hype.