Jose Ramirez has been good for seemingly forever. The 2012 U.S. Olympian made it out of the small town of Avenal, California, all the way to becoming the most iconic fighter of the Central Valley, as he has pulled in huge gates for a decade, with the help of his promoter, Top Rank Inc., and manager, Rick Mirigian.
Ramirez now will be fighting for the first time since getting married and heads back to the Save Mart Center, in Fresno, California, the venue that made him a national attraction to fight on ESPN, once again, Saturday, March 25th, as he faces former world champion, Richard Commey.
“I would get mad at myself sometimes because I couldn’t let myself be average,” said Jose Ramirez in a documentary released Monday on Top Rank Boxing’s YouTube page entitled The Dream Americano. “I believe the atmosphere at the Save Mart Center on March 25th, will make people’s hearts vibrate. The excitement, the shouting!”
For those who have followed Ramirez’s career, this is fight is compelling, but what makes this fight week interesting is the fact this might be the last time we see Ramirez in Fresno. I know the team would never say this, but we’re close to the end. Ramirez has accomplished a lot in the sport, and built up a whole eco-system of fighters - the main story is Ramirez coming home to Fresno for one of the last times in his career, as he looks to win and land a huge fight, elsewhere.
Though humble to his very essence. The fact that Fresno has hosted so many events over the past decade is single-handily because of Ramirez. Ramirez’s influence can also be seen in the next generation as fighters like Richard Torrez Jr., and Bryan Lua have had the chance to fight at home, as opposed to the road - largely because of Ramirez’s success. Before Ramirez, you had two parts of California - Northern California and Southern California. Now after Ramirez’s career, we have a third - Central California, the home to where all the food agriculture in the state is collected. That said, the humble begins of Ramirez have never left him as he remembered the struggles
“When I told myself, ‘Jose, you might be really good at this’, was when I won my way to nationals and the Junior Olympics as a 17-year-old,” continued Ramirez. “I was the first [fighter] in the Central Valley to come back with a gold medal from the Junior Olympics. That made me realize I was the best in the nation, and I was a senior in high school, and I worked at Starbucks. I was America’s best boxing barista.”
