Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez and Michael Hunter will be both returning to the ring on Dec. 19 in Texas, according to a post on Instagram from Ramirez’s promotional company:
The 29-year-old Ramirez (40-0, 26 KO) hasn’t fought since an Apr. 2019 win over Tommy Karpency, which saw the Mexican southpaw move up to the light heavyweight division, after having held the WBO super middleweight title for about three years.
Ramirez became a free agent after splitting with Top Rank a few months later, and has been out of the ring since. He’ll be facing Alfonso Lopez (32-3, 25 KO), a 38-year-old Texan probably best-known for a 2011 loss to Kelly Pavlik, where he was more competitive than two of the three score cards would lead you to believe. Lopez hasn’t done much of note since then, but he’s won 10 straight since 2014, following a pair of 2012 losses to Dyah Davis and a sub-.500 club fighter named Justin Williams.
Hunter (18-1-1, 12 KO) was with Matchroom Boxing, but split with them in July and was hoping to return in September. But it’s tough to get decent fights if you don’t have a real promoter, which is one way of saying don’t expect TBD to turn into a real threat for this fight. The 32-year-old former U.S. Olympian last fought in Dec. 2019, going to a draw with Alexander Povetkin in Saudi Arabia. You’ll likely see him in against basically a heavyweight equivalent of Alfonso Lopez.
The show will, it seems, be carried by FITE TV, but it also looks like most people are going to be very busy that night with something else, be it Canelo vs Callum Smith, Ryan Garcia vs Luke Campbell, or Gennadiy Golovkin vs Kamil Szeremeta. All of those dominoes will fall across that weekend (or not, maybe), and at least one of them will definitely be on Dec. 19.