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Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez vs Chris Billam-Smith: Who Wins?

Originally posted on Fights Around The World
By Abraham Gonzalez | Last updated Nov 14, 2024 4:02 PM ET

Saturday night, live on DAZN, Golden Boy Promotions will host a cruiserweight unification bout at the Venue Riyadh Season in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. WBA champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez (46-1, 30 KOs) and WBO champion Chris Billam-Smith (20-1, 13 KOs) will face off to determine who will be the unified cruiserweight champion. It won’t be pretty, but Saturday night should be entertaining, but it could potentially be a one-sided affair.

Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez Is Having The Run He Has Been Searching For All of These Years

At age 33 and being a pro for over 15 years, the ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez train has had its fair share of starts and stops. He won the WBO super middleweight title in 2016 while under the Top Rank umbrella against Arthur Abraham, and things appeared to be taking off. The 6’2” Ramirez has the big smile and warm personality you would expect from a star, but after winning the title, things never took off for him. Ramirez started to have trouble making 168 so he moved up to light heavyweight in 2019.

Fights with the other champions couldn’t get made, and eventually, Ramirez left Top Rank and joined Golden Boy in 2021. His promoter got Ramirez what he was looking for, and that was a big title fight against Dmitry Bivol in 2022. Ramirez would lose a one-sided, unanimous decision, which forced him to look at moving up to cruiserweight. He tried the new weight class in March 2023 against Joe Smith Jr. and has remained there since. In March, Ramirez won the vacant WBA cruiserweight title, which led to Saturday’s unification with Billam-Smith.

How does Ramirez become a unified champion on Saturday in Riyadh? He needs to do what got him here, and that’s box behind the right jab. Ramirez must follow it with multiple combinations to the body early in the fight. Ramirez isn’t a knockout fighter, so he will have to breakdown Billam-Smith, who will be charging in and trying to keep the fight on the inside. Ramirez has good footwork and can maneuver around any of the Billam-Smith rushes and if he does so, he will have his hand raised at the end of the fight.

The Time Is Now For Chris Billam-Smith

The cruiserweight division isn’t flooded with big names, and when Billam-Smith won the WBO title against Lawrence Okollie in May 2023, it meant that he accomplished something but nothing that would move the needle for boxing fans. Once Ramirez won the WBA title, Billam-Smith knew that it was his chance to boost his career to levels he has yet to see. Billam-Smith is 34, and the opportunities for a big fight are becoming less and less, so it made all of the sense in the world to face Ramirez now, especially since unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk hinted at potentially returning to cruiserweight. Billam-Smith has a chance to become one of BOXXER’s top fighters with a win on Saturday night so how does he do it?

Billam-Smith must make the fight as ugly as possible and be first with his punches. If he can apply pressure and force Ramirez to move backward while not allowing him to get in rhythm, Billam-Smith has a real chance to have two titles around his waist. The one thing he needs to avoid is how many times he lunges in with his hands down. A fighter like Ramirez will pick up on that and could catch him with an uppercut if Billam-Smith isn’t careful. It’ll be interesting to see if Billam-Smith can handle the much bigger Ramirez and force him to fight his fight.

GILBERTO RAMIREZ VS CHRIS BILLAM-SMITH PREDICTION

This fight will likely go the distance and Ramirez will come out victorious leading to his pursuit of the other two titles and a potential showdown with Oleksandr Usyk in late 2025.