Jose Ramirez (28-1, 18 KOs) beat his hand-picked opponent Richard Commey (30-5-1, 27 KOs) by a grueling eleventh-round knockout in an official WBC light welterweight title eliminator on Saturday night at the Save Mart Arena in Fresno, California.
In the 11th, Ramirez put Commey away, knocking him down twice with perfectly placed shots. In the first knockdown, Ramirez hurt Commey with a right uppercut followed by a left hook to the head.
In the second knockdown in the round, Ramirez hit Commey with a grazing left to the body that put him on a knee where he took was counted out by referee Jack Reiss at 2:31 of the 11th.
Ramirez came flying out the gate in the first couple of rounds, throwing close to 100 punches in the first round alone, trying to score a quick knockout of Commey.
The high punch volume by Ramirez is the same one that he’d used with great success through much of his career, and it had worked well for him until he ran into Josh Taylor in 2021.
Tonight, Ramirez discovered early on that he wasn’t going to be able to bum rush the veteran Commey, as he cleverly covering up on the ropes and connecting hard counter shots.
If not for Ramirez having such a good chin, he could have been knocked out because he was getting clobbered by Commey repeatedly due to his reckless style of fighting.
Commey fought Ramirez to a standstill from the fourth until the tenth round. Ramirez didn’t throw as many punches during those rounds because he kept eating hard counters from Commey. The right hands from Commey were particularly dangerous for Ramirez because he was putting a lot of power and speed behind those shots.
Commey looked like the better fighter in rounds six through nine, as he was taking advantage of Ramirez’s overaggressiveness to connect with hard punches.
Ramirez was trying too hard to impress his fans at the Save Mart Arena, and he wasn’t showing Commey the kind of respect that he needed to because he was trying to run over the game like he was one of the scrubs that he’d beaten earlier in his career.
The victory earned the former WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Ramirez the mandatory spot to challenge WBC 140-lb champion Regis Prograis, which, oddly enough, he turned down and chose to fight the 36-year-old Commey instead.
Ramirez will likely turn down the Prograis fight again because he’s clearly been avoiding that fight since way back in 2018. Its unclear why the World Boxing Council made the Ramirez vs. Commey fight a title eliminator because Jose already turned down the fight, and, predictably, he’ll keep on doing it.
In the co-feature bout, WBA minimumweight champion Seniesa “Super Bad” Estrada (24-0, 9 KOs) beat WBC champ “Tiny” Tina Rupprecht (12-1-1, 3 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision. The scores were 100-90, 100-90, and 100-90.