Undefeated Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramírez (44-0, 30 KOs) used his tremendous size advantage to stop #2 WBA Dominic Boesel (32-3, 12 KOs) in the fourth round in a WBA light heavyweight title eliminator on Saturday night on DAZN at the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California.
The 30-year-old Ramirez stalked his smaller, weaker opponent Boesel around the ring, pinning him to the ropes to unload with power shots. In the fourth round, Ramirez dropped Boesel with a hard body shot.
Although the German fighter Boesel made it back to his feet, the referee chose to halt the fight anyway due to its one-sided nature of it. Boesel, 32, looked like he could have continued, but he was taking too much punishment to be allowed to continue. The time of the stoppage was at 1:33 of the fourth round.
The victory makes Zurdo Ramirez the mandatory challenger to WBA 175-lb champion Dmitry Bivol. Ramirez said after the fight, “stop running, Bivol.”
It’s unlikely that Zurdo, 30, will get an immediate title shot against the unbeaten Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs), though, as there’s a possibility that he could be fighting a rematch against Canelo Alvarez after beating him last Saturday night in Las Vegas.
If not Canelo, Bivol will fight the winner of the June 18th fight between IBF/WBC light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev and WBO champion Joe Smith Jr for the undisputed 175-lb championship.
It’s more likely that Zurdo Ramirez will need to wait until early 2023 before he gets a shot at whoever holds the WBA title by then, be it Bivol, Canelo, Beterbiev or Smith Jr.
Ramirez rehydrated an absurd 29 pounds, going from 175 to 204 lbs overnight and looking like a small heavyweight inside the ring with the much smaller Boesel.
The size that Ramirez packed on made him REALLY slow without adding much in the power department. Indeed, Ramirez doesn’t appear to have gained any punching power from his days as the WBO super middleweight champion.
Zurdo is slower now, and his punch output is nowhere near what it once was when he was fighting at 168. He used to be capable of throwing a lot of pinches in that weight class, but not since moving up to 175.
The 32-year-old German fighter Boesel looked terrible tonight, and it’s hard to know what the World Boxing Association was thinking in giving him a #2 ranking with their organization.
The way Boesel fought tonight, he shouldn’t be ranked in the top ten, let alone at the #2 spot.
