Briedis and Ramirez vie for vacant IBF Title: Purse bid on January 16th

Former IBF/WBC cruiserweight champion Mairis Briedis and former WBO tremendous middleweight champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez can be preventing for the vacant IBF title just lately stripped from champion Jai Opetaia.

There’s a handbag bid scheduled for January sixteenth. Dan Rafael says the 38-year-old Briedis (28-2, 20 KOs) wasn’t fascinated about negotiating for the combat with ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez and opted for the purse bid on January sixteenth.

Ramirez getting fast title shot

It’s form of fast for Ramirez to be getting a world title shot after preventing simply as soon as at cruiserweight. Granted, it’s a weak division, however Ramirez ought to have no less than needed to work his approach right into a place.

Ryan Rozicki and Huseyin Cincara deserved extra to combat for the vacant IBF cruiserweight title in opposition to Briedis than Ramirez.

Briedis misplaced his IBF cruiserweight belt to Jai Opetaia by a twelve spherical unanimous choice in July 2022. For some cause, Briedis didn’t rematch with Opetaia, which might have made for an attention-grabbing conflict.

Opetaia was then stripped when he selected to combat on the ‘Day of Reckoning’ card final month on December twenty third in opposition to non-ranked fighter Ellis Zorro.

Does Briedis have something left?

Briedis took quite a lot of punishment in his loss to Opetaia, and we’ll see how properly he holds up in opposition to Ramirez if this combat seems to be a shootout.

Ramirez (45-1, 30 KOs) is coming off a ten spherical unanimous choice win over former WBO mild heavyweight champion Joe Smith Jr. final October.

For that combat, the 32-year-old Ramirez modified his type completely, boxing and shifting and preventing nothing like he’d been earlier than. Artur Beterbiev had knocked Smith out at mild heavyweight in his earlier combat.

In Ramirez’s combat, he misplaced a large twelve spherical unanimous choice to WBA mild heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol in November 2022. Ramirez seemed large for that combat after rehydrating, which made it clear that he wanted to maneuver up in weight.