By Dan Ambrose: Jose Ramirez and Richard Commey will be headlining on ESPN this Saturday, March 25th, in a 12-round light welterweight contest at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California.
The Ramirez-Commey card will be shown live on ESPN, ESPN Deportes, and ESPN+, beginning at 10:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. PT.
The former WBC & WBO 140-lb champion Ramirez (27-1, 17 KOs) needs an impressive performance against the 36-year-old former IBF lightweight champion Commey (30-4-1, 27 KOs) to show fans that he’s not a shot fighter, as what appears to be the case judging from his last three fights.
This is an important fight for Ramirez because if he doesn’t look impressive against this level of opponent, it would show that he’s not going to be a world champion again, and he’s heading nowheresville.
Ramirez-Commey undercard:
Seniesa Estrada vs. Tina Rupprecht
Raymond Muratalla vs. Humberto Galindo
Antonio Mireles vs. Patrick Mailata
Charlie Sheehy vs. Angel Rebollar
Jessie James Guerrero vs. Eduardo Alvarez
Subaru Murata vs. Jose Negrete
Ricardo Ruvalcaba vs. Marco Cardenas
Why did Ramirez reject a title shot against Prograis?
Ramirez, 30, has taken a tremendous amount of criticism from fans for him rejecting a guaranteed title shot against WBC 140-lb champion Regis Prograis.
According to Ramirez, the money wasn’t to his liking for the Prograis clash, so instead, he’s fighting Commey in a fight with no belt and even less money. When you see Ramirez turning down a title shot, it shows you where his career is heading.
It’s hard not to view that move by Ramirez as a duck job because if he believed he could beat Prograis, he would have taken the fight and made more money than he would in his fight against Commey.
On top of that, Ramirez would have potentially captured the WBC light welterweight title if he’d beaten Prograis.
With that said, Ramirez likely would have been totally dominated by Prograis and possibly knocked out, so he made the right move by turning down what would almost certainly be ended badly for him.
Ramirez hasn’t looked good since his sixth round knockout win over Maurice Hooker in 2019, four years ago against an average fighter.
Previous to that fight, Ramirez beat Jose Zepeda by a controversial 12 round majority decision. Many boxing fans that saw that fight had Zepeda winning comfortably, as he outboxed Ramirez, taking advantage of his face-first, come-forward fighting style to pick him apart.
Richard Commey not looking good
Commey has been struggling lately, winning only one of his last four fights since 2019. He lost his IBF lightweight title by a second round knockout to Teofimo Lopez in December 2019 and then soundly beaten by Vasily Lomachenko in a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision in December 2021.
It’s very likely that Commey would have been knocked out by Lomachenko if Loma hadn’t eased off after hurting him in the seventh round. The fight looked like a sparring match, with Lomachenko taking it easy on Commey and still dominating him.
In Commey’s last fight, he fought to a 10 round draw against Jose Pedraza last August. You could say it was a moral victory for Commey because he didn’t lose, but how happy can he be with a draw?