By Steve Kim
Despite his massive amateur credentials and his status as world champion, Vasyl Lomachenko, still has yet to gain a foothold in terms of having a real fan-base witness his talents. Promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank hopes that the reigning WBO featherweight titlist can piggyback a bit off the box-office success of Jose Ramirez.
Ramirez, who was a 2012 U.S. Olympian, fought in front of an announced crowd of over 13,000 this past weekend at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California.
In speaking of Ramirez's future plans, Bob Arum the chairman of Top Rank explained to BoxingScence.com:
"We're going to give him another fight, probably in Fresno and our hope would be that we bring a fighter who's an HBO fighter, who doesn't have that home base - like a Lomachenko - and have him do a title fight in Fresno and put Ramirez on the second spot on the card because they're dying for an HBO show there and we can raise ticket prices and still sell it out."
Ramirez improved to 16-0 (12 KO's) by coming off the canvas in the second round to decision Johnny Garcia over eight rounds. Lomachenko last fought on November 7th in front of a rather sparse crowd at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas on the Tim Bradley-Brandon Rios undercard, where he halted the over-matched Romulo Koasicha in ten.
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
