The night Chris Billam-Smith claimed world cruiserweight gold in Bournemouth was Shane McGuigan’s proudest moment as a coach to date. Yet the trainer knows his hard-working champion needs more than just willpower and desire to dethrone newly-crowned WBA titleholder Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez during their much-anticipated WBO, WBA unification in Riyadh this weekend.
McGuigan: Got to be on point against Zurdo’s granite chin
- A peek behind the curtain! CBS’ head trainer Shane McGuigan told BBC’s Steve Bunce: “We need a little bit of what [Dmitry] Bivol did, also mix it in with [Arsen] Goulamirian – he had success, just got hung up on his power. It’s down to us to fight at a slightly higher tempo, Chris has always favoured [doing that] against bigger guys and outworked them, it’ll be nullified against someone coming up from 175lbs so we’ve gotta be really on point.”
- Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez began his career at middleweight and kept moving up weights since being outboxed by long-reigning WBA light-heavyweight champ Dmitry Bivol in their Abu Dhabi showdown (Nov. 2022). He outworked Arsen Goulamirian to win WBA honours on March 31
- Billam-Smith vs. Ramirez headlines a six-fight card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this weekend. The winner is widely expected to box IBF champion Jai Opetaia at some stage in 2025 as the division nears its first undisputed champion since Oleksandr Usyk departed the 200lb weight class in 2019
CHRIS Billam-Smith’s inspiring rise was complete in May last year, when he dethroned a former sparring partner and stablemate in Lawrence Okolie to win the WBO cruiserweight world championship among home comforts on the south Coast.
Yet on he went, contrasting title defences against Mateusz Masternak and then embracing the enemy moniker against Richard Riakporhe to avenge a defeat five years later, the Bournemouth man has achieved far more than many expected.
This weekend, he faces an even tougher ask in newly-crowned WBA champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez and most expect he’ll return home as a former champion looking to rebuild. Yet as his trainer Shane McGuigan contextualised in conversation with BBC’s Steve Bunce, the hard work means this opportunity is no accident.
“For a guy that came to me with not much of an extensive amateur career, he was a relative unknown so we didn’t really put any boundaries, limitations or expectations on what we believed he would achieve.
Now, he’s boxing a unification fight in Saudi Arabia. He’s taken it in stride, doubled down extra hard to get to this position, worked harder than all of them to get to where he’s got. His excelling trait is mindset and dedicating himself to his craft – great athleticism and a big athlete yes, but it’s earned, not given.”
At the time of Ramirez’s wide unanimous decision defeat by then-WBA light-heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol, two years ago this month, I wrote:
Bivol ended his 2022 by making a 44-0 challenger – a former super-middleweight world champion – look ordinary and by his own admission, could’ve been better.
The reason why I cast some serious pre-fight doubt about Ramirez’s ability to match and potentially topple Bivol was partly his strength of schedule. Rewatching fight tape from recent bouts and you could see some glaring tendencies, without needing to look too hard, there to be exploited. Defensively and in attack.
Jesse Hart said Zurdo doesn’t like pressure. Who does? Wearing on a bigger man, making him miss and staying out of range while peppering him with clean shots, watching him second-guess himself, that’s one way to make him feel hard done by.
Since that night, Ramirez took time out to lick his wounds and began re-inventing himself as a fully-fledged cruiserweight, having struggled to make the 175lb limit four months later. Now, he’s more settled and technical defiencies less obvious against physically bigger opposition where his previous strengths are more obvious.
He pitched a near shutout over ten rounds against former WBO light-heavyweight titleholder Joe Smith Jr last October and the 33-year-old southpaw took advantage against an inactive champion in Arsen Goulamirian, who punches harder than Billam-Smith by McGuigan’s reckoning, but isn’t nearly as battle-hardened.
“Zurdo has been pro a long time, started at a lighter weight but has really filled into the weight category. He’s not a massive 200lber but gonna be solid, fights at a higher tempo than most, got a granite chin and used to being in there with decent punchers… never been stopped, recovers well after being hurt.”
Picture source: Getty Images, quotes hyperlinked
Mo and Sports 