Fast Results from Fresno: Ramirez Wins Lopsidedly in a Humdinger

Jose Carlos Ramirez was scheduled to make the first defense of his WBC 140-pound title here in Fresno on July 7. The match evaporated with less than 48 hours notice when his opponent, Massachusetts fireman Danny O’Connor, almost literally went comatose trying to make weight. Promoter Bob Arum ultimately filled the vacant slot with Antonio Orozco and that was something of a surprise.

For one thing, Orozco, 27-0 going in, was far more well-thought-of than Danny O’Connor. On paper, Arum did Ramirez no favors by getting him a much tougher opponent. Also, Orozco has had his own issues making weight. In September of last year, he was a no-show for his weigh-in for Roberto Ortiz, a match that would have been seen on HBO, and the match had to be cancelled. It came out that Orozco was seven (!) pounds over the limit.

To everyone’s relief, Orozco made weight on his first try yesterday, coming in at 139.4. And he put up quite a battle, although one wouldn’t know it from the final scores. All three judges had it 119-107 for the defending champion, but Orozco had many good moments although there were times when it appeared that he had scant chance of lasting until the final bell.

Ramirez knocked Orozco down with a straight right hand in the fourth stanza. Orozco went down hard and barely beat the count, but he was punching back before the round was over. A similar situation unfolded in round eight, but this time it was a wicked left hook to the liver that caused the knockdown. But again Orozco refused to fold. So what we had was that rare commodity – a fight where the victor won virtually every round, but a fight with few dull moments that was highly entertaining.

Other Bouts

The co-feature was a ho-hum affair between junior lightweights Jamel Herring and John Moralde. Compared with the main event, it was if the combatants were fighting in slow motion.

Herring, a former Marine Sergeant and former Olympic teammate of Ramirez, was the aggressor throughout and swept all 10 rounds on all three scorecards. There were no knockdowns but Herring, who advanced to 18-2, suffered a bad gash above his right eye in the final stanza after an accidental clash of heads. Now 32 years old, Herring will need to develop a harder punch if he hopes to make headway. Moralde, an awkward fighter from the Philippines, fell to 20-2.

In a 10-round welterweight match, Russian import Alexander Besputin (11-0, 9 KOs), who trains with Vasyl Lomachenko, scored a ninth round stoppage of game but ultimately out-gunned Alan Sanchez (20-4-1). A high-pressure fighter who reportedly had more than 300 amateur fights, Besputin became the first fighter to stop Sanchez who entered the contest with an 8-fight winning streak.

In another welterweight match, Hiroki Okada (19-0) kept his undefeated record intact, but just barely, winning a 10-round split decision over Argentina’s Cristian Corea, (27-7-2). Okada, who was making his U.S. debut, had fought all of his previous matches at Tokyo’s cozy Korakuen Hall.

Former WBA 130-pound champion Bryan Vasquez, who has grown into a junior welterweight, improved to 38-3 with a 10-round unanimous decision over Carlos Cardenas. This was designed as a stay-busy fight for Costa Rica’s Vasquez, one of Top Rank’s newest signees. Cardenas had won only three of his previous 12. It did not reflect well on Vasquez that the fight went to the scorecards, but he learned early on that he could stand off his Venezuelan adversary with body punches and was content to work on that aspect of his game.

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