Gilberto Ramirez/Photo courtesy of Top Rank Inc.
Oscar De La Hoya may not be keen on his fighter – Saul “Canelo” Alvarez – fighting middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. But promoter Bob Arum said Tuesday he would love to pit his fighter – super middleweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez – against Golovkin sometime next year. It would mean Golokvin moving up to the super middleweight limit of 168 pounds, something his team has always said he could do if the right fight came along.
“This is not just talk,” Arum said at the Conga Room in Los Angeles before he played host to a news conference announcing the undercard to the July 23 junior welterweight title-unification fight between Terence Crawford and Viktor Postol at MGM Grand in Las Vegas (on HBO pay-per-view); Ramirez (34-0, 24 KOs) will make his first title defense against Dominik Britsch (32-2-1, 11 KOs) in that semi-main event.
Arum said he has had more than one meeting with Tom Loeffler, general manager of K2 Promotions, the banner under which Golovkin fights.
“If the fight happens, we’re pretty well agreed on terms and we feel that with ‘Zurdo’ fighting in July and Gennady probably fighting in September because ‘Canelo’ won’t be available, then we need to do one more fight for ‘Zurdo’ and then plan the fight for next year.
“And I think Loeffler’s pretty much on that page. That’s not to say that if he could get ‘Canelo’ this year (for Golovkin), he wouldn’t do it. But I don’t think he’s going to.”
A call to Loeffler was not immediately returned.
Ramirez, a 6-foot-2 1/2 southpaw, is from Mexico. He made history on April 9 by becoming the first Mexican to win a world title at super middleweight when he took the title from Arthur Abraham with a unanimous decision on the undercard of Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley III.
Ramirez is just 24.