It took a few rounds for Gilberto 'Zurdo' Ramirez to find his rhythm Saturday night, live on DAZN.
And when he did, the Mexican boxer overwhelmed Chris Billam-Smith with smooth footwork and volume punching toward a unanimous decision victory to add the WBO title to his own WBA strap as the new unified cruiserweight world champion.Â
Judges scoring the Riyadh Season Latino Night event had it 116-112, 116-112 and 116-113 all in favor of Ramirez. DAZN News had Ramirez winning by a wider margin, 118-110.
CBS came out strong, sitting on his shots and using his size as the bigger man to his advantage over the first two rounds. But Ramirez began finding his groove by the third round.
During the fourth round, it was evident Billam-Smith couldn't turn with Ramirez as the Mexican's footwork gave the British fighter major problems to keep up.
Ramirez used his opponent's vulnerability to find a home with his right hand over the guard, asserting a straight left and left hook, and stabbing shots to the body soon thereafter as well.
Ramirez never looked back from that point, peppering CBS nearly at will with a high volume of flush shots the rest of the way, through Billam-Smith did show plenty of heart in a gutsy performance.
Despite being up comfortably on the scorecards, Ramirez aggressively looked for the stoppage in an action-packed 12th round. He didn't get it but improved to 47-1 with 30 KOs via the unanimous decision, proving that he was levels above Billam-Smith (20-2, 13 KOs).
Here are all the key round-by-round updates and highlights from Ramirez's big win.
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