Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez to face Dominic Boesel in May 14 DAZN main event

Golden Boy quietly announced tonight that Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez will face Dominic Boesel in a May 14 main event on DAZN, flashing the graphic at the end of the Diaz-Gesta show.

Ramirez (43-0, 29 KO) has yet to find the big fight he said he signed with Golden Boy to get when he inked a deal with them in early 2021, after a one-off free agent bout he promoted himself following his 2020 departure from Top Rank.

Boesel (32-2, 12 KO), though a solid veteran fighter, is not that big fight, just as Sullivan Barrera and Yunieski Gonzalez weren’t in Zurdo’s first two Golden Boy outings.

The former super middleweight titleholder and current light heavyweight contender Ramirez had hoped to force a fight with WBA titleholder Dmitry Bivol, but his prediction that Bivol wouldn’t land the Canelo Alvarez fight he wanted didn’t come true, as Bivol will face Canelo on May 7.

Boesel’s most recent fight was an Oct. 2021 split decision win over Robin Krasniqi, a rematch of a 2020 fight where Krasniqi knocked Boesel out in the third round. Boesel’s other loss came in 2017 against Karo Murat via 11th round stoppage. He’s been a European-level fighter, but he does hold the IBO title at the moment, which it seems promoters who don’t have fighters in particular divisions are looking to push as a fifth major world title. If we all do our jobs as fans, this will never gain traction.

Zurdo vs Boesel will be going head-to-head with the undisputed 154 lb championship rematch between Jermell Charlo and Brian Castano, as well as Sergey Kovalev’s move to cruiserweight against Tervel Pulev in a Triller Fight Club main event that same night.

This was the second upcoming main event dropped by Golden Boy tonight, after a more proper announcement that Murodjon Akhmadaliev will face Ronny Rios on June 11, also on DAZN, for Akhmadaliev’s two 122 lb titles. Neither of these fights as main events figure to draw much real attention, in all honesty, and could have been paired together, but everyone’s got content quotas to meet, so it is what it is in this great streaming landscape of the future.