Jose Ramirez’s manager, Rick Mirigian, is a vibrant boxing personality many fight fans might have interacted with on social media as well as rival managers. As a massive pay-per-view runs opposite of Saturday, March 25th’s bout from Fresno, California, the elephant in the room has been something that isn’t happening. Rather than the junior welterweight bout between former unified world champion Jose Ramirez, and former lightweight world champion, Richard Commey, many pundits have wondered why Jose Ramirez isn’t fighting Regis Prograis, the current WBC junior welterweight world champion.
For those unaware, Ramirez was the mandatory challenger for Regis Prograis’ world title, but the fight fell apart. As with all stories, there is three sides to each story, the two sides of each party, and then the truth. Mirigian was more than willing to share his side of what happened in a failed negotiation for a world title fight.
For Mirigian, it is simple economics, the fighter who can draw the bigger numbers should be entitled to a bigger amount of the revenue, even if they are not the world champion. An example he cited, is IBF, WBA, and WBO heavyweight world champion, Oleksandr Usyk being willing to fight WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury for 30% of the revenue split, despite having more world titles. The Ramirez side wanted certain finical demands that most world title challengers would not be allocated.
“In our scenario, we are not dealing with the same dollars as [Tyson] Fury vs. [Oleksandr] Usyk, but it is the same principle, Ramirez is an opponent [b-side fighter], who brings the a-side aspects of the financials to the fight,” said Mirigian. “It is the job of the managers at that point to make the fight happen. They know both guys want to fight each other. Supposedly both guys. If Regis really wanted to fight Jose like he said then why wasn’t the trigger pulled.”
Mirigian furthered the following information that he stated as facts, as to why this bout could’ve and should’ve happened, but didn’t. We are currently making efforts to speak to Regis Prograis’ side to give them an adequate representation of their perception of these comments.
“Here are the facts,” as Mirigian began to go into great detail. “[Prograis vs Ramirez] is a fight [Prograis] could make more money than any other person he could fight, that is a fact. The second fact, there was a high probability, if not a certainty that [Regis Prograis] would’ve been on a major network like ESPN, which he needs. Another fact, the gate, the attendance, and those things involved, we all now know, what I said happened, there is 15,000 people [attending Jose Ramirez’s fight on March 25th in Fresno, California], that [Prograis] would have been fighting here [and in-front of]."
