Gilberto Ramirez’s light heavyweight debut was a resounding success.
In the co-main event of the Top Rank on ESPN+ card from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Ramirez dominated Tommy Karpency throughout four rounds. The fight was ended after four rounds when Karpency was unable to continue.
Karpency did text Ramirez’s chin early in the fight by landing a couple of left hands and Ramirez took those shots well and seemed unfazed by virtually anything Karpency did. Ramirez was the aggressor throughout most of the fight, landing the left hand upstairs and mixing in some body work here and there.
As the fight wore on, Ramirez started to lead with the body shots more often and each punch that landed seemed to be more devastating than the last. After four rounds ended, Karpency and his team retired from the fight, giving Ramirez his first win in the new weight class. In a post-fight interview, Karpency said a left hand to the body within the first minute of the fight dictated how the rest of the evening would go for him.
Regardless of how Ramirez performed in this fight against Karpency, he is still the WBO super middleweight champion. Ramirez made the jump to 175 pounds to test out the waters in the new weight class as he hopes to challenge for a world title. Ramirez has stated that he will consider a move back down to super middleweight if he gets a major fight. But for now, Ramirez hopes to get a light heavyweight title fight against any of the champions. Such a fight is possible for him given that three of the four top titleholders at 175 pounds (Sergey Kovalev, Artur Beterbiev and Oleksandr Gvozdyk) are on the Top Rank roster like Ramirez.
The fight was the last one on the ESPN+ card before Vasiliy Lomachenko defends his WBA and WBO lightweight titles against Anthony Crolla. Rising prospects such as Arnold Barboza Jr. and Alexander Besputin won the undercard and you can read a post-fight report of that at this link.
