By Dan Ambrose: Newly crowned WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez (34-0, 24 KOs) will be making his first defense of his WBO title in three months from now on July 23 on an HBO pay-per-view card at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. This will be a voluntary defense for Ramirez.
The 24-year-old Ramirez will be fighting on the undercard of the light welterweight clash between WBO 140lb champion Terence Crawford and WBC champion Viktor Ramirez. Also on the card is unbeaten featherweight contender Oscar Valdez fighting an opponent still to be determined.
Ramirez captured the WBO 168lb title on April 9 of this month by beating former WBO champion Arthur Abraham by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 120-108, 120-108 and 120-108. The victory for Ramirez made him the first Mexican super middleweight champion.
It didn’t take much for Ramirez to get the win because the 36-year-old Abraham fought like he wasn’t even trying. It was not one of Abraham’s better performances in his career and you have to wonder whether he still has his heart in the game at this point in his long career. Ramirez won, but he didn’t fight a guy that looked like he was mentally engaged in that fight.
The 6’2” Ramirez’s opponent could be #7 WBO Isaac Ekpo (28-2, 21 KOs). Ekpo, 33, fought in the 2004 Olympics for Nigeria and was eliminated in round one by Utkirbek Haidarov. Expo was beaten by Robert Stieglitz by a 12 round unanimous decision in a fight that easily could have gone the other way.
Ekpo has since won his last six fights against weak opposition. Ekpo’s career has started in 2004, and he’s been fighting largely the same type of opposition since he first started his pro career. The only deviation from the norm of weak opponents for Ekpo was his fight against Stieglitz.
Ramirez’s promoter Bob Arum would like to see him fight unbeaten middleweight world champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin this year. However, Golovkin has already said he’s not interested in the fight against Ramirez because he wants a big name for his next fight, not a guy that needs him so that he can try and make a name for himself.
Ramirez may wind up being a star one of these days, but the problem is he’s not a star right now and it wouldn’t help GGG’s career to fight an unknown guy at this point. Golovkin would need to move up to super middleweight to fight Ramirez at the full weight of 168 for the fight to happen because Ramirez is too big to cut down in weight.
Ramirez is someone that could easily be fighting in the light heavyweight division, which is why it won’t work for Golovkin to fight him. He would need to move up all the way to super middleweight for the fight to take place and he wouldn’t get any credit for beating him.
Arum will likely match Ramirez up with Top Rank stable fighter Jesse Hart in his next fight after the voluntary defense against Ekpo. It’s going to be a long haul for Arum to try an turn Ramirez into a star. He’s fighting in the wrong division to become a star in the U.S. Ramirez might need to bite the bullet and move up to light heavyweight if he wants to become a star.