Jose Ramirez looked a bit rusty and showed a number of his classic bad habits, but his pressure, volume and stamina were enough to see him through the match against Rances Barthelemy.

Ramirez (29-1, 18 KO), fighting for the first time since last March, went through the first two rounds with relative ease, while Barthelemy (30-3-1, 15 KO) struggled to get off the ropes or free his own hands. significant crime. But midway through the third period, Barthelemy exploded with a series of straight lefts that left Ramirez reeling. Another “Kid Blast” swarm knocked Ramirez to his knee, and that’s when the first of several oddities occurred.

Referee Jack Reiss was unusually snail-paced to react, allowing Barthelemy to strike at the grounded Ramirez before eventually separating them. Instead of calling a knockdown or deducting a point from Barthelemy, he concluded that Barthelemy had pushed Ramirez and chose to give him a warning. When Barthelemy wobbled Ramirez again and tried to unload, the bell rang with 15 seconds left on the DAZN clock.

I will say that it’s unclear whether the clock was still running when Reiss was berating Barthelemy, but I didn’t hear a rattle.

Barthelemy had a few more of these good moments over the next few rounds, including a sequence where he landed three full-power straight lefts in a row, but quickly ran out of steam. Ramirez eased the pressure enough to see Barthelemy’s increasingly sporadic counterattacks and just continued to bang his head and body against the ropes, almost getting to the finish in the 11th minute before Reiss stepped in before the bell and said “that’s it,” and then as usual, he sent them to their corners when the bell actually rang.

Barthelemy mustered up the courage to attack in the final round, but he was too deep in the hole and Ramirez walked away with a unanimous decision on scores of 119-109, 119-109 and 118-110. Bad Left Hook went up in Ramirez’s favor 117-111, giving Barthelemy the final round.

Honestly, Ramirez didn’t look like a threat to the current super lightweight elite. His head movement seems as indigent as it did when Josh Taylor was guiding him to those knockout shots in 2021, and his body language wasn’t great when Barthelemy, who isn’t a power hitter, was hitting the target.

Still, he came out on top and there’s no shortage of potential opponents for him in the division on DAZN, so we’ll see where he goes. As for 38-year-old Barthelemy, his legs and circulatory system appear to be much more functional than his heart.

Ortiz flattens Dulorme with a liver shot

Vergil Ortiz Jr’s catchweight bout with Thomas Dulorme was every bit what we expected. The two groped each other for about two minutes, each working the jab, before Ortiz completely crushed him with a shot to the liver.

There’s really nothing more to say; Ortiz (21-0, 21 KO) clearly still has the strength, but Dulorme (26-7-1, 17 KO) has lost three of his previous four and was at least one weight class above his ideal. This told us nothing about whether Ortiz is elite at 154 pounds or whether he will even have a chance to face Tim Tszyu when they meet in August.

Duarte gives Diaz his first loss after the stoppage

For about four rounds, Joseph Diaz Jr looked like he still had something in the tank. While he clearly had the advantage over the much larger Oscar Duarte, he moved and boxed quite well despite the intense pressure.

That’s when Duarte (27-2-1, 22 KO) apparently decided “alright, time to win.” The combination in the fifth fight left Diaz (33-6-1, 15 KO) more concussed than in any fight I can remember, and although Diaz survived, Duarte was unable to stop him. He hit Diaz in the body, found the target with shots to the head from the hip, and consistently cycled through Diaz’s combinations, leading him to catch-and-pitch counterattacks.

Diaz had been on loan since about the seventh period, and when Duarte hit the ropes overdue in the ninth period, both the referee and Diaz called the stoppage simultaneously from the corner.

JoJo later claimed that nothing happened to him and promised that he would come back. He was pressed on whether he would return to the weight class he actually belongs to, but he refused to answer. He is now 1-5 in his last six games.

In the rematch, Esparza lost to Alaniz

Former unified flyweight champion Marlen Esparza gained a full two pounds overweight yesterday and looked fit for the ring, showing off a good jab and some nice footwork, but she struggled to keep up with the furious pace of rival Gabriela Alaniz.

Alaniz (15-1, 6 KO) immediately looked to take advantage of Esparza’s (14-2, 1 KO) questionable preparation, marching forward with plenty of combinations and consistently targeting the body with robust right hands. She seemed capable of overpowering Esparza early on, but to her credit, the former Olympian was able to at least partially snail-paced down Alaniz and stabilize her jab in the later rounds.

Perhaps realizing the fight was slipping away, Alaniz erupted in fire in the tenth and final round. Despite Sergio Mora’s insistence that her performance was the result of frustration, Alaniz seemed only too ecstatic to challenge Espara, who simply lacked the firepower to keep Alaniz at bay as the Argentine sold out.

The effort ended up saving Alaniz from a controversial draw, and she leaves the ring with the WBC, WBO and WBA flyweight titles on her belt thanks to a pair of scorecards of 97-93 and 96-94. Steve Morrow’s 98-92 disparate card deserves some form of investigation that will never happen.

We’ll see if Alaniz has better luck setting up an undisputed title fight with Gabriela Fundora than Esparza.

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