Can Arum get Golovkin to fight Gilberto Ramirez?

By Boxing News - 04/10/2016 - Comments

ramirez9999By Dan Ambrose: Undefeated Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez (34-0, 24 KOs) did his job last Saturday night in schooling an old, slow and small WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (44-5, 29 KOs) in defeating him by a 12 round unanimous decision to take his title in front of a large crowd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Ramirez’s promoter Bob Arum is very interested in having Ramirez fight undefeated middleweight world champion Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) if the Kazakhstan fighter is willing to move up to 168 and fight Ramirez at the full weight for the super middleweight division.

The 6’2” Ramirez is simply too big to fight Golovkin at a catch-weight of 164lbs or at 160. Arum obviously knows that, because he’s not even offering that as part of the deal. Golovkin would need to move all the way up to 168 to fight Ramirez. It’s hard to understand where Golovkin comes out ahead for fighting the 24-year-old Ramirez.

Arthur Abraham’s purse last night for the Ramirez fight was just $500,000. If Golovkin moves up to 168 to fight the much heavier and taller Ramirez, $500,000 would amount to be a pay cut for him. In other words, Golovkin would be doing Arum a favor by fighting Ramirez. I’m not sure that’s a smart thing for Golovkin.

“Ultimately, the fight we want to make is Golovkin going up in weight fighting Ramirez,” Arum said recently to the latimes.com. “We could go right from winning the title to fighting Golovkin. Ramirez wants to fight Golovkin. Maybe the middle of 2016. … I don’t think ‘Canelo’ will fight Golovkin. ‘Canelo’ has no chance at Golovkin. None. Zero. Too small. My guy’s bigger. So Golovkin can go up to super-middleweight to find competition.”

This is actually kind of funny what Arum is saying about Golovkin moving up to fight Ramirez at the full weight of the super middleweight division. Ramirez isn’t even a popular fighter yet, and he needs someone like Golovkin to turn him into a star if he can beat him. But with the way Ramirez was running around the ring last night in playing keep away from Abraham, I don’t think Golovkin’s promoters at K2 Promotions are going to ever accept a fight against Ramirez.

Besides Ramirez being a guy that looks like he should be fighting in the light heavyweight division rather than at super middleweight, his running style of fighting is too similar to a past Golovkin opponent Martin Murray. Golovkin had no problems beating Murray, but he has to chase him for 11 rounds, and the fight was very boring to watch. There was no excitement there for the boxing fans, and it was largely a waste of time for Golokvin to fight Murray.

If Golovkin had to fight another Murray in Ramirez, it wouldn’t be a positive thing for his career. Golovkin needs opposition that are going to make for exciting fights. Sadly, you can’t say Ramirez would make it exciting against Golovkin because it would likely be a fight involving Ramirez running all night long trying to keep away from Golovkin.

I would hope that Ramirez wouldn’t resort to fouling Golovkin to keep him off, because there were some fouls from Ramirez lasdt night against Abraham. I saw Ramirez nail Abraham low at one point, and shoulder him hard and hit him with a rabbit shot. If Ramirez started fouling Golovkin all night, in addition to running, it would be just unwatchable.

I think Arum need to coach Ramirez to talk to him about how to become a more exciting fighter. He’s not going to become the next Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Oscar De La Hoya with all the running he’s doing. To become a star, you’ve got to be able to stand in the pocket and actually fight. If you can’t do that, then you’re only going to be popular to fans that like to see movement and pure boxing rather than the fans that like action. I almost fell asleep watching Ramirez vs. Abraham last night because it had so much running from Ramirez.

“I took to him a Mexican boxing school,” Ramirez said to ESPN.com about Abraham. “He was a very, very strong puncher, but he couldn’t take any movement. I knew halfway through the fight I was going to win the fight. I came here to make history, and I did it.”

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Beating Abraham was really no big deal at all because he wasn’t even throwing punches. He was just covering up and failing to put pressure on Ramirez. Abraham looked like he wasn’t willing to do what he needed to do in order to win the fight. The way to beat Ramirez is to put unrelenting pressure on him the way that Maxim Vlasov was doing in their fight in early 2015. Arum says that Ramirez has improved since then. I don’t agree.

I think Ramirez had a poor opponent that wasn’t willing to walk through his shots last night in Abraham. He looked an old fighter that didn’t want to get his feet wet. There was no hunger at all from Abraham. If you’re going to beat a runner like Ramirez, you’ve got to be able to put total pressure on him, throw lots of shots, and stay close to him. You don’t give a guy 6’2” space, because that’s dumb.

Abraham was just covering up for the most part waiting for Ramirez to stop throwing shots. When Ramirez would stop throwing, he would start running around the ring, changing directions and just looking to spoil. Instead of covering up, Abraham needed to be letting his hands go at the same time that Ramirez was throwing shots, and he needed to immediately go after him as soon as Ramirez would back away to escape.

If this had been Golovkin in the ring with Ramirez last night, he would have made him miserable because he would have been throwing power shots at all times, and he wouldn’t have let Ramirez run around the ring like he was doing. Golovkin would go after Ramirez’s body. There’s nothing worse than being hit hard in the midsection when you’re running because your breathing when you’re running, and it’s hard to tense up your midsection the way you need to in order to take a body shot. Abraham was just letting Ramirez run without even throwing to the body. It looked Abraham was fighting for the first time in his life, and didn’t have a clue what to do in the ring.



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