From a tactical standpoint, the choice of opponent for Albert Ramirez’ next bout is crucial.
Is he southpaw or orthodox?
A boxer or a brawler?
Does he start fast or finish strong?
All critical details as Ramirez – ranked #4 at light-heavyweight by Ring Magazine – crafts his game plan and fine-tunes his training ahead of his main event Feb. 5 at Montreal Casino, atop the card that will kick off Eye of The Tiger’s 2026 season.
But big picture, it doesn’t matter who Ramirez faces. Until he can lure one of the 175-pound division’s titleholders into the ring, he enters every bout with the same three objectives.
Win.
Send a message to every other world-class light-heavyweight that he’s ready for his title shot.
Remind fans that he’s both a skilled boxer and a home-run puncher, and worth watching every time he competes.
And while February 5 is about the task in front of him – EOTTM will finalize an opponent in the coming weeks – it’s also about the opportunities another win would create for the 33-year-old southpaw from El Vigia, Venezuela. More specifically, he’d love to force a showdown with WBC champion David Benavidez.
Photo: David Benavidez
“In 2026, I’d like to fight the best,” said Ramirez, in a video interview from his training base in Toulouse, France. “They say Benavidez is the best, The Monster. That’s the opportunity we’re waiting for.”
Ramirez, a former WBO Global champion at cruiserweight, enters 2026 the same way he did 2025 – within spitting distance of a shot at one of the major titles, concentrating on his craft while his management team navigates the turbulent business of world-level boxing. So if Ramirez’ career trajectory appears to have plateaued, it’s not because his skills have stagnated. It’s just that the upper tier of the light-heavyweight division is both packed with talent and mired in turmoil.
Dmitry Bivol holds the WBO, IBF and WBA titles, and, if healthy, might have been in line to face Ramirez, who won a WBA title eliminator over Jerome Pampellone in August. But Bivol remains sidelined while he recovers from surgery to correct an unspecified injury, and hasn’t yet set a date for his return to the ring. In Bivol’s absence, David Morell and Callum Smith have agreed to terms on a showdown for Smith’s interim WBO belt.
Meanwhile Benavidez, fresh off his seven-round destruction Anthony Yarde, has targeted a showdown with cruiserweight champion WBA Gilberto Ramirez on Cinco de Mayo weekend. Which means that for the first half of 2026, provided he emerges from his February bout victorious and healthy, Ramirez will have to employ a skill that’s been just as useful as his handspeed and punching power.
Photo: Dmitry Bivol
Patience.
“If it’s my year, I’ll take advantage. If it’s not, we’ll keep working,” he said. “We’re still waiting, thinking, ‘This is the year.’ But last year was also the year. It’s all out of my hands. Everything’s a business.”
We could also view patience as a muscle that Ramirez has strengthened on the long path to world title contention.
In 2015, as a member of Venezuela’s national team, Ramirez won silver at the Pan American Games in Toronto, then reached the second round at the Olympics in Rio the following summer. He left that tournament disappointed in himself at not having prepared more thoroughly.
Ramirez now says that he lacked the maturity to recognize the difference between being good enough to qualify for the Olympics, and focused enough to win them. But rather than wait until the Tokyo Games, Ramirez, with some help from his cousin, the veteran super middleweight José “El Bolivita” Uzcategui, relocated to Mexico and turned pro in 2018.
From there, his career has taken him to Argentina, Monaco, France and Montreal, where he has competed three times since January 2024. Ramirez’ pro boxing passport also includes a stamp from his native Venezuela, where he stopped Adam Deines in seven rounds in August 2024, and a trip to Libya, for that WBA title eliminator.
Eight years into his pro career, Ramirez is used to playing the long game, but thinks an impressive win in February will force his rivals, along with the sport’s decision makers, to reckon with him.
Photo: Vincent Ethier – Albert Ramirez
“At any moment, that time could come – the best against the best, and in the ring there’s only one winner,” he said. “I’m ready to make some noise and do damage to anybody at 175.”
If you’ve been following Ramirez in recent years, then you know why he’s a tough matchup for the other elite light-heavyweights. There was that efficient third-round TKO over Marko Calic last February, and in June he turned Mikey Wileman’s lights out with a thunderous right uppercut in round two.
Two months after that came the WBA title eliminator in Libya against Pamellone, who entered that fight determined not to let Ramirez land his straight left hand. The strategy worked until the middle rounds, when Ramirez finally calibrated his distance and timing, and began thumping Pampellone with power shots. Pampellone went down once in the sixth and twice more in Round 7 before referee Janny Guzman stopped the bout.
But Ramirez says his signature victory is his 10-round decision over Lenin Castillo in September of 2023. That night he showed the poise to solve a tricky opponent, the power to put him on the canvas, and the patience to win by decision once it became clear Castillo wouldn’t stay down.
In short, he demonstrated why other world-class light-heavyweights would like to avoid him, but can’t for much longer.
“A lot of people already know my name, and we know a lot of fighters are trying to dodge me,” he said. “Anybody in the light-heavyweight division, we’ll be ready.”
Photo: Vincent Ethier – Albert Ramirez
