Jose Carlos Ramirez looks forward to the day he can proudly proclaim himself to be a two-division world champion.
That day won’t come, however, until he cleans house in his current weight division.
“I think I owe I to myself to fight for all the belts,” Ramirez (25-0, 17KOs) confirmed during a recent interview with Top Rank’s Crystina Poncher. “If I were to move up to the next weight class (without doing so), there will always be that doubt because there is another guy with two belts (Scotland’s Josh Taylor). And there are some other fighters that I did not get to face at 140.”
Such a declaration puts the Central California-bred boxer at least two or three fights away from abandoning the junior welterweight division. The reigning unbeaten and unified titlist is currently awaiting what will be a third date for a first fight with mandatory challenger Viktor Postol. The two were due to collide on February 1 in Haikou, China, which was rescheduled to May 9 in his home region at Save Mart Arena in Fresno, only for both dates to get scrubbed due to the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
A fight with Ukraine’s Postol (31-2, 12KOs)—a former World Boxing Council (WBC) titlist and the sanctioning body’s current top 140-pound contender—will have to be his first order of business once boxing is able to resume. Waiting in the wings will be his other mandatory challenger, England’s Jack Catterall (25-0, 13KOs) who serves as the number one contender with the World Boxing Organization (WBO).
Ramirez inherited the latter mandatory challenge in his last fight to date, a 6th round knockout of then-unbeaten WBO titlist Maurice Hooker in their unification bout last July.
Likewise, fellow unbeaten and unified 140-pound titlist Josh Taylor (16-0, 12KOs) is burdened with mandatory obligations of his own. The 29-year old southpaw from Edinburgh, Scotland is awaiting a new date for his unified title defense versus Thailand’s Apinun Khongsong, as their International Boxing Federation (IBF) mandatory title fight was due to take place May 2 at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland.
Whether the pair of unbeaten, unified title claimants are able to get out of their respective mandatories and go straight to a head-on collision, or they meet after their next respective fights, the divisional superfight is the one that will keep Ramirez at the weight—no matter how long it takes.
“I really want to prove a lot of people wrong,” insists Ramirez, a member of the 2012 U.S. Olympic boxing team which competed in London who has celebrated his two-year anniversary as WBC titlist. “I want to do it to myself. I know I can be the best 140 in the world. I know I can see myself with all four of those belts and it’s a matter of time.
“Once I do that, it’s going to put my name worldwide. It is definitely going to make a stronger impact when I do move to 147 knowing that the undisputed world champion is moving up to 147. I think that’s going to make more noise.”
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox