By Ryan Burton
Newly crowned WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto "Zurdo" Ramirez (34-0) was scheduled to make the first defense of his title on July 23rd against Dominik Birsch in the co-featured bout in support of the Terence Crawford-Viktor Postol pay-per-view headliner.
However his first defense had to be put on hold when an injury to his hand required surgery.
Ramirez's adviser Sean Gibbons recently told BoxingScene.com's Steve Kim that they were hoping Zurdo would be able to return to the ring before the end of the year.
Top Rank CEO Bob Arum who promotes Ramirez said that the doctor who performed the surgery is very confident that the Sinaloa, Mexico native will indeed be able to step in the squared circle again in 2016.
"His doctor, the guy who performed the surgery, I brought him into boxing. He is at the Kerlan Jobe Orthopedics office. They are the same people that took care of Manny Pacquiao which was Neal Elattrache. Dr. (Steven) Shin is I think the best damn doctor in the country. He has done (Julio Cesar) Chavez Jr, (Vasyl) Lomachenko, among others. He did the operation on Gilberto. He knows boxing and he knows what he is talking about and he said Gilberto will be back in the ring in November, December. He will definitely fight before the year is out," Arum told BoxingScene.com.
Ramirez captured the title when he shut out former two-division champion Arthur Abraham in April.
Send questions or comments to ringsidewriter@gmail.com. You can follow Ryan on Twitter @ringsidewriter