Ramirez edges Postol after wait

Sights now set on Taylor, undisputed title

WBC and WBO junior welterweight champion Jose Ramirez waited 13 months to fight Viktor Postol.

Now, he’ll wait again to fight WBA and IBF champion Josh Taylor.

Ramirez ended the longest layoff of his career Saturday by eking out a 116-112, 115-113, 114-114 majority decision over Postol inside Top Rank’s bubble in MGM Grand’s Grand Ballroom.

The fight was supposed to happen in February and again in May, but was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ramirez (26-0, 18 knockouts) can shift his focus to Taylor (16-0, 12 KOs), who makes a mandatory title defense Sept. 26 against Apinun Khongsong. Ramirez wants to fight Taylor next to establish an undisputed junior welterweight champion. “Hopefully he defends his titles and we can make the fight happen,” Ramirez said. “I would have loved to make a bigger statement (against Postol), but hey, that’s part of boxing.”

Postol, 36, is a former world titlist and showed championship pedigree against Ramirez on Saturday. He pestered the unified champion with a sharp, crisp jab, and used his length to keep Ramirez away from him during the first six rounds.

But Ramirez emerged in the second half of the fight and became the aggressor, stunning Postol (31-3, 12 KOs) with power shots in the seventh and eighth rounds to defend his unified titles. He landed 156 punches to Postol’s 147, including 48 body punches to Postol’s 19.

He also connected on 28 percent of his punches, compared with 22 percent for Postol.

“It was a good fight, but both men were impacted by going through three training camps and the whole situation with COVID-19,” said Top Rank chairman and Ramirez’s promoter, Bob Arum. “That being said, I thought Jose clearly won the fight.”

Ramirez conceded that he performed the best he could, and he knows he’ll need to be sharper to beat Taylor. He said he usually feeds off of a crowd and is willing to fight in Taylor’s native United Kingdom if fans can attend.

Ramirez’s manager, Rick Mirigian, said he thinks a crowd is unlikely.

“I’ll be limited with what we can do as far as staging an event or anything,” Mirigian said of a showdown against Taylor. “I look for this event to probably go to the highest bidder. End up in London somewhere or possibly even Vegas.”