Dmitry Bivol vs. Gilberto Ramirez Nov. 5 is a very interesting fight that we will look into a little closer. Remember when Bivol fought Canelo I predicted that he would beat him and it hit. Not many people thought that he would have a chance against Canelo who looked invincible at the time. People thought that Bivol would suffer the same fate as Callum Smith, Billy Joe Saunders and Caleb Plant, that Canelo sooner or later would be able to get to them and break them down. He had done it so many times before but this time he wasn´t able to. Bivol was simply better then the other guys I mentioned, all of them good fighters in their own right but Bivol had special qualities that saw him be highly successful. Bivol has very good understanding of distance and he has a very, very good jab. He keeps it very simple and he is not greedy meaning after he had success for the first 8-9 rounds, he kept to the same gameplan the whole fight making no mistakes. A wolf would rather starve than make a mistake. Bivol was a huge +400 underdog in that fight and we took advantage of that great price on Bivol. This time it is with Gilberto Ramirez where the value is. After beating Canelo, Bivol is now a big favorite to beat Ramirez. In my view he is a too big of a favorite to beat Ramirez. In my mind this is very close to a 50/50 fight. And the advantages Bivol had over Canelo will not be as advantageous against Gilberto Ramirez. Canelo turned out to be tailormade for Bivols good footwork and jab and Canelo just couldn´t get past that. But here is an important thing to note. Gilberto Ramirez who is coming in to this fight with a perfect record of 44-0 is nothing like Canelo. Ramirez is a huge guy for the weight division while Canelo is short for even 168, let alone 175. Ramirez throws a lot of punches from different angles and he works the body probably better than anyone else in the division. Bivol will not be so successful with his jab as he usually is because Ramirez is taller and he is used to counter the jab from his southpaw stance. Gilberto Ramirez has not been given the respect he deserves here because he simple isn´t so well known to the public as Bivol now is and the victory over Canelo for Bivol now makes everyone think that Bivol can´t be beat at the moment. I highly disagree with that. Gilberto ramirez looks better than he ever has before and he looks powerful. He is confident of winning this fight and he has been asking for it for several years. The fight is taking place in a neutral venue in Abu Dhabi and I would expect fair judging in this fight. I think that this will be a very close fight with both guys having their way at times. This will be the toughest fight that Bivol has fought in his life. He will come out and try to box around Ramirez using distance but he will not be able to maintain that. If he comes out victorious it will look like he has been in a hard brutalizing war for 12 rounds because there is no way I see Bivol being able to manuever around Ramirez for 12 rounds without being hit with hard shots to his head and body. I think that Bivol will take hard punishment in this fight no matter the outcome. In this close match-up I see Ramirez doing enough to win the fight because of the pressure he will put on Bivol for 12 rounds and he is bigger and stronger than Bivol and that will make a difference. You can currently still get +350 (4.50 decimal odds) on this fight and that is great value.
The Pick is Gilberto Ramirez to win the fight