WBO featherweight champion Oscar Valdez (22-0, 19 KOs) had his worst performance of his career in having to battle doubly hard to win a 12 round unanimous decision over Miguel Marriaga (25-2, 21 KOs) last Saturday night at the SubHub Center in Carson, California. The fight was shown on Top Rank PPV.
Valdez, 26, did enough to rate the decision, but the only thing that separated him from Marriaga was the 10th round knockdown that Valdez scored. Marriaga appeared to win more rounds, but the knockdown was the difference. The judges’ scores seemed to come from a completely different fight, as they had Valdez winning easily by the scores 119-108, 116-111 and 118-109. I had Marriaga on top in winning 7 of the 12 rounds. Valdez got tired in the last 2 rounds. The judges still gave him the rounds, but Marriaga got the better of a tired Valdez.
The fight was an exciting one, but the scoring was not good and not reflective of the fight that took place. Marriaga fought Valdez to a standstill for 12 rounds. If you take away the knockdown in the 10th, Marriaga was the better fighter.
The real question is will Top Rank match Valdez and Marriaga again after this fight?
“It was a tough fight and it was my first time going 12 rounds. I knew he was going to be a tough fighter. It was nothing easy much respect to Marriaga,” said Valdez to Fightnews.com.
In the co-feature bout, WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez (35-0, 24KO) beat Max Bursak (35-5-1, 15 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision. Ramirez looked weak and badly weight drained throughout the 12 round fight. In the second half of the contest, Ramirez ran out of gas and was throwing arm punches. The shots had no effect on Bursak, who walked through the punches to connect occasionally. It was hard for Bursak to land a lot of punches because Ramirez was moving around the ring all the time, and not letting him get close.
The judges scored the fight 120-106, 120-106 and 120-106. Those were fair scores. Bursak did nothing in the fight.
Ramirez looks like he’s fighting in the wrong division. He probably should be fighting at light heavyweight. He’s draining down to fight at 168, but I don’t think he’s going to be able to hold onto his WBO title for any length of time. Ramirez will be find as long as he’s matched carefully against fringe contenders like Bursak, but when he faces someone good, I see him losing. You can understand why it might not be a good idea for Ramirez to move up to 175.
Yes, Ramirez would be fighting in the right weight class for his body size, but he would have to deal with the likes of Sergey Kovalev, Artur Beterbiev, Joe Smith Jr., Eleider Alvarez, Andrzej Fonfara and Oleksandr Gvozdyk. Those guys are all big punchers, and they would cut off the ring and catch up to Ramirez and give him problems once they started bouncing power shot off his chin.
WBO super bantamweight champion Jessie Magdaleno (25-0, 18KO) defeated Adeilson Dos Santos (18-3, 14KO) by a 2nd round knockout. Magdaleno put Dos Santos down twice in the 2nd before the fight was stopped.