By Jim Dower: WBA World cruiserweight champion Denis Lebedev (28-2, 21 KOs) weighed in at 198.7 pounds at Friday’s weigh-in for his unification match against IBF cruiserweight champion Victor Emilio Ramirez (22-2-1, 17 KOs) this Saturday night at the Khodynka Ice Palace in Moscow, Russia. Ramirez, 32, weighed in at 198.6lbs. The winner of the Lebedev vs. Ramirez fight will need to face IBF mandatory challenger Murat Gassiev this year. The 22-year-old Gassiev won a lot of fans this week with his brutal 1st round knockout win over Jordan Shimmell.
The Lebedev-Ramirez unification fight was originally supposed to be the co-feature bout on the Deontay Wilder vs. Alexander Povetkin fight card. However, with Povetkin testing positive for a banned substance, the fight was postponed by the World Boxing Council.
The Lebedev vs. Ramirez fight was then moved up to the main event on the card rather than the card being canceled. It’s a good thing the card is still going forward because the Lebedev-Ramirez fight is a good one.
Ramirez will be fighting for the second time as the IBF champion. He fought to a controversial draw in his last fight in October of last year against Ovill McKenzie in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Many boxing fans that saw the Ramirez-McKenzie fight felt that Ramirez should have lost the fight. But with it taking place in his hometown of Buenos Aires, many fans felt that Ramirez was given a gift draw instead of a loss.
The important thing to know from watching the Ramirez vs. McKenzie fight was that Ramirez’s work rate is going to need to improve dramatically for him to be able to beat the 36-year-old Lebedev. This fight is taking place in Russia, not Argentina, and it’ll be the Russian Lebedev who is considered to be the home fighter in this fight. The southpaw Lebedev lives in Chekhov, Russia, but he’s still the home fighter in this fight. Ramirez must throw more punches because he’s going to get outworked by Lebedev by a wide margin in this fight if he doesn’t increase his work rate considerably from what he showed in the McKenzie fight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3N4uxq-sOQ
Ramirez defeated Ola Afolabi by a 12 round unanimous decision in April 2015 to win the interim WBA cruiserweight title. That was another fight that Ramirez arguably should have lost because Afolabi looked like the better fighter. Ramirez lucked out in the 11th round when Afolabi was twice penalized for low blows that cost him two points. It’s not often that a fighter loses two points in a single contest for low blows, and it’s even rarer when the point deductions come back to back in the same round. Afolabi just bad luck in that fight.
Lebedev, 5’11”, has looked really good in his last three fights since losing to a much bigger Guillermo Jones by an 11th round knockout in May 2013. That was a fight where Lebedev suffered a badly swollen eye that caused the contest to be eventually halted. The fight should have been stopped earlier due to how bad Lebedev’s eye looked. Since that fight, Lebedev has beaten Pawel Kolodziej, Youri Kayembre Kalenga and Lateef Kayode. Lebedev looked solid in all three fights.