By Dan Ambrose: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum wants IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) to move up in weight to 168 and fight his fighter #1 WBO, #2 WBA, #2 WBC, #3 IBF Gilberto Ramirez (32-0, 24 KOs) in 2016 if Ramirez wins his next fight against Gevorg Khatchikian (23-1, 11 KOs) on November 20th, and then beats the winner of the November 21st fight between WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham and #15 WBO Martin Murray.
Arum says that Ramirez will challenge the winner of the Abraham-Murray fight in March or April 2016.
“The question is who would you want him [Golovkin] to fight at middleweight?” Arum said to Dontae’s Boxing Nation. “I think he goes through every middleweight, so that’s a real problem. Now I think Golovkin can only be challenged by going up to 168, and I would like to see him fight Gilberto Ramirez, who will be fighting in Vegas at the Cosmopolitan on the 20th of this month. If he wins that fight, he’ll fight the winner of Abraham vs. Murray, and if he wins that fight, he’s agreed to fight Golovkin and that would be a hell of a fight,” Arum said.
I don’t think Golovkin is going to be tempted to move up to super middleweight to fight the 6’2 ½” Gilberto Ramirez if he wins the WBO super middleweight title in 2016. I can see why Arum would want Golovkin to take the fight with Ramirez, because it would increase the popularity of Ramirez even if he gets blasted out by Golovkin.
Having seen the 24-year-old Ramirez fight recently against Derek Edwards and Maxim Vlasov, I think Golovkin would toy with him in scoring an easy knockout. Ramirez is very raw and is only now starting to learn how to fight from the outside. He’s still an inside fighter for the most part, and Golovkin would absolutely destroy him.
There’s no gain for Golovkin moving up to fight an inexperienced and badly flawed fighter like Gilberto Ramirez, because once he beats him badly, Golovkin would be stuck in the super middleweight division without any big names for him to fight. The top fighters at 168 are Abraham, Badou Jack and James DeGale. Abraham would likely never agree to fight Golovkin, and the other guys aren’t worth fighting.
Instead of Arum hoping that Golovkin will fight Ramirez, he should be looking to match Ramirez with some of the better known guys at light heavyweight like Andre Ward, Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev, Artur Beterbiev, Eleider Alvarez, Yunieski Gonzalez, Juergen Braehmer and Edwin Rodriguez. I know Arum is really high on Gilberto Ramirez, but I can’t see him beating any of those fighters, and he’s definitely big enough to fight all of them.
If Arum is really careful with Ramirez, he could turn him into a popular fighter by steering him around all the good fighters at 168. I don’t think Ramirez can beat Abraham, so it’s pointless for Arum to speculate about wanting to match him against Golovkin in 2016. I don’t see it happening. Even if Ramirez does somehow beat Abraham, I don’t see Golovkin wasting his time fighting a paper champion like Ramirez.
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