By Dan Ambrose: WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez (34-0, 24 KOs) didn’t seem to admire the way fellow Mexican countryman Saul “Canelo” Alvarez gave up his WBC middleweight title without a fight last Wednesday in vacating the title rather than face his mandatory challenger Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in the ring to defend the title.
The 24-year-old Ramirez said that he would like to now face the hard hitting Golovkin if he wants to fight a real Mexican.
“If Gennady Golovkin wants to fight a Mexican real, here I am raising his hand to face, for the honor of Mexico,” Ramirez said to espndesportes. “Come whoever comes. I am very motivated and ready for great things. I feel ready now for those big fights and whatever comes. Every day I feel stronger physically and mentally, on July 23 I will defeat Britsch and then I by Golovkin, to see if it does fight me.”
Right now, Ramirez doesn’t have a big enough name for Golovkin to bother moving up in weight to fight him. Fighting Ramirez would be like Golovkin fighting guys like Lara, Dominic Wade and Willie Monroe Jr. There would be no upside in Golovkin moving up in weight to take the fight with the young Mexican fighter.
Golovkin would actually be doing Ramirez and his promoters at Top Rank a huge favor if he were to give him the fight because it would help Ramirez’s popularity, even if he gets knocked out by Golovkin, which you’d have to figure would happen. Just by fighting Golovkin, Ramirez would be seen by millions of fans and that would help his career while doing very little for Golovkin’s.
He would likely be skewered by the boxing community due to Ramirez being an inexperienced fighter despite having beaten a past his best 36-year-old Arthur Abraham on April 9 of this year to capture the WBO 168lb title on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley card in Las Vegas, Nevada. There’s no upside for Golovkin to fight Ramirez right now for Triple G.
Instead of calling Golovkin out, Ramirez needs to be calling out the 25-year-old Canelo, because they’re both about the same age. Canelo is the one with the huge fan base. If Ramirez can lure Canelo up to super middleweight to fight him, he could get a big payday against him and increase his fan base at the same time.
The problem is Canelo likely wouldn’t even consider taking the fight because he’s still stuck on fighting at 155 for his catch-weight fights. Canelo thinks he’s still a 154lb fighter rather than a middleweight. Ramirez would have to melt down to 155 if he wanted to fight Canelo, and that would likely leave him too weak to fight properly.
I’m not sure if the fight could get made even if Ramirez could do that because it would depend on Ramirez’s promoters at Top Rank to negotiate the fight with Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy. The two promoters are currently working together, but I still have doubts whether the fight could get made.
Ramirez will be making his first title defense in two months from against #11 WBO fringe contender Dominik Britsch (32-2-1, 11 KOs) on HBO pay-per-view in the co-feature bout on the Terence Crawford vs. Viktor Postol at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. If Ramirez, 6’2”, gets past the 28-year-old Britsch, he would be available to fight Golovkin if the Kazakhstan fighter is willing to move up to 168 to fight Ramirez in his weight class.
The southpaw Ramirez is too big to move down to middleweight to fight Golovkin. Indeed, there are major question marks about how much longer Ramirez will be able to melt down to super middleweight to keep fighting in that weight class because he looks just as big as the light heavyweight fighters like Sergey Kovalev. Of course, it would very difficult step up or Ramirez when he finally is forced to make that move because he’s not a big puncher like Kovalev and the other top light heavyweights like Adonis Stevenson and Artur Beterbiev. Ramirez is like a super middleweight version of Erislandy Lara, a fighter who must move nonstop to avoid getting nailed by his stronger opponents. Beterbiev, Stevenson and Kovalev are too good at cutting off the ring. They wouldn’t let Ramirez run around the ring all night long without intercepting him and punching his lights out.