By Brian Webber: Two-time Olympic gold medalist & current WBO featherweight champion Robeisy Ramirez (13-1, 8 KOs) routed #11 Satoshi Shimizu (11-2, 10 KOs), stopping him in the fifth round in a successful first defense on Tuesday night at the Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan.
Robeisy hit the 37-year-old Shimizu at will with punches the entire night and poured it on in the fifth, connecting with repeated uppercuts to the head to drop the Japanese warrior.
With Shimizu’s nose bleeding badly after he got back to his feet, Robeisy finished him off with a follow-up barrage of shots.
The referee Ramon Pena had no choice but to stop the fight, given that Shimizu was just covering up in a shell, taking nonstop bombs from Robeisy without answering back. The contest was halted at 1:08 of the fifth.
This fight was a stay-busy showcase for Robeisy to stay active while fighting a guy that would allow him to display his talent to the world.
After the fight, Robeisy said that he was ready to face the other featherweight champions, Luis Lopez, Leigh Wood & Rey Vargas, in a unification bout. It’s unlikely any of those fights will happen next, unfortunately.
Final punch stats:
Robeisy landed 100 of 227 punches thrown for a connect rate of 44%. For his part, Shimizu landed 22 of 187 shots for a 12% connect rate.
Shimizu had some success when he was on the outside, throwing nonstop shots, but most of his punches were picked off on the gloves of Robeisy.
Ramirez wants a unification next
Robeisy Ramirez: “Now I set my sights on a world title unification clash. I am ready to go to Japan, Scotland, England, Mexico, wherever we have to fight. I will always be available to do my job.”
“Ramirez, he’s so strategic inside the ring. He understands when he needs to pour it on,” said Tim Bradley to ESPN about Robeisy’s victory over Satoshi. “Shimizu was coming on and exerting a lot of energy, and Ramirez decides when he decides to throw his combinations.
“They’re lethal, they’re precise, and they’re so accurate, and it was just too much for Shimizu. He plays peek-a-boo with his opponents. He’s a jack-in-the-box. He pops up, puts that high guard up, takes some shots on his arms, and when he’s ready to attack, he explodes. My goodness.
“The combinations that he throws, the explosiveness, the accuracy, it’s scary, it’s death-dealing, it’s no joke. He goes down to the body, he goes down to the head, and he changes levels. He can box off his back foot, but he’s become more of a lethal puncher, sitting down on his shots,” Tim said about Robeisy.
Ramirez has evolved his style
“Ismael Salas has done wonders for him. You have to understand this. When you have 300, 400 amateur fights, it’s so hard to break that mold, that amateur mold. I remember his first fight when he came in. He had all these flashy combinations, all this movement, and all these antics in jumping around.
“He’s not doing that anymore. He’s in the ring to hurt his opponents, and that’s what you saw tonight from Robeisy Ramirez.”
“Robeisy, look at how he’s evolved in terms of his power-punch connect percentage, and yet his inability of his opponents to do anything,” said Joe Tessitore.
“You mentioned all these great fighters that lost their pro debut. What I haven’t seen is anyone with this kind of arc to their career. The wild ups & downs,” said Mark Kriegel. “The escaping from Cuba, the losing his pro debut, and in this short of time becoming a champion and physically reconstructing his style and his body. He’s a destructive guy now.”
“That is his eighth knockout among his thirteen wins, and he turns it on for a TKO win in five,” said Joe Tessitore. “He is at an elite company at this stage.”
“He has also developed a fearsome world-class uppercut,” said Mark Kriegel about Robeisy. “That’s like his home run shot. Again, this is completely different fighter than you saw debut in Philadelphia.
“I think in every single way and emotionally as well if you think about what proceeded the twelve months before his pro debut.
“It was a heroic, harrowing escape from Cuba, and when he got that tattoo removed, he said, ‘I getting out of here or I’m dying.’ He was very serious about that. The arc of this story was not like any other that I’ve seen.”