Jose Ramirez defeats Antonio Orozco – RESULTS

By Chris Williams: Jose Ramirez (23-0, 16 KOs) successfully defended his World Boxing Council light welterweight title in beating #3 WBC Antonio Orozco (27-1, 17 KOs) by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision in a voluntary defense on Friday night at the Save Mart Arena in Fresno, California. The scores were 119-109, 119-107 and 119-107. Boxing News 24 had Ramirez winning 11 rounds to 1.

Orozco took a lot of punishment in this fight. His team should have pulled him out of the fight by the 9th round when it was clear that he had no chance of winning and was just getting hammered. Ramirez knocked the previously unbeaten 30-year-old Orozco down twice in the fight in dropping him in rounds 4 and 8, but he was unable to finish him off.

Ramirez knocked Orozco down in round 4 with a nice right to the head. Four rounds laer, Ramirez dropped Orozco with a body shot in the 8th.

Tonight’s Ramirez vs. Orozco fight was televised on ESPN. Ramirez, a 2012 U.S Olympian, was making his first defense of his WBC 140 pound title that he won last March in beating Amir Imam by a 12 round unanimous decision.

The 26-year-old Top Rank promoted Ramirez laned 259 of 704 shots for a connect percentage of 37. For his part, Orozco landed 185 of 563 shots for a connect percentage of 32.

It was a good win for Ramirez, but the victory failed to show that he’ll anything more than a speed bump against interim WBC light welterweight champion Regis Prograis when he emerges from the World Boxing Super Series light welterweight tournament. Top Rank wasn’t in a hurry to let Ramirez face Prograis before the tournament, so the fight will have to wait until afterwards. It’ll be interesting to see if Ramirez vacates the WBC title if he’s able to get his hands on the WBO 140 pound title. Ramirez is a good fighter, but what he showed tonight is nothing that Prograis will have a problem with. Prograis is looking much better than Ramirez. Indeed, Prograis will have arguably tougher competition in the WBSS tournament against Josh Taylor, Ivan Baranchyk and Kiryl Relikh than what he’ll deal with when he faces Ramirez.

Technically, Orozco came into the fight an unbeaten fighter, but he clearly deserved a loss three years ago in his fight against then 35-year-old Humberto Soto in 2015. Soto got the better of Orozco and deserved the win but the younger fighter was given the decision. Since that fight, Orozco’s career hasn’t looked the same. He stopped being matched against decent opposition and he’s looked beatable. In Orozco’ s fight before his questionable win over Soto, he struggled to beat Emmanuel Tayler by a 1-0 round decision.