Jesus Ramos embraces 49-day turnaround between fights for Kevin Salgado showdown

These days, a boxer accepting a fight after a three-month break between fights is rare. Jesus Ramos will be back in the ring just 49 days after his eighth-round stoppage of Jeison Rosario.

“No injuries in my previous fight, nothing to worry about, so I’m able to step back in the ring,” Ramos, 22-1 (18 KOs), said Tuesday during the virtual press conference for the Sebastian Fundora-Chordale Booker card. In the co-main event, Ramos will fight the 17-2-1 (12 KOs) Kevin Salgado.

Wanting to compensate for an inactive 2024, in which Ramos’s only outing was a ninth-round stoppage of Johan Gonzalez, Ramos told his team that he wanted to fight more frequently this year. “When they presented me with this opportunity, I said ‘yeah, that’s exactly what I wanted.’”

Ramos later said that he wants to fight three or four times this year.

Seven weeks isn’t enough time for a typical camp, but Ramos isn’t worried. “I think the fact that this is a short one is not really going to affect me so much, because I am coming off a long and extensive training camp. I usually like to do a little pre-camp, maybe four to five weeks, just to get acclimated and get ready, and then eight weeks of strong training.

“We don’t have that type of time, but I feel like it doesn’t matter. Like I said, I just fought a couple weeks ago, so I’m still in great shape coming into this camp. And I feel good. In some of the trainings, I even take my foot off the gas because we’ve still got some time, and you don’t want to peak too early. I think we’re right where we’re supposed to be.”

Ramos isn’t only looking to fight; he’s looking for knockouts. His lone loss came to Erickson Lubin in 2023, and though the decision was deeply unpopular, observers also felt that Ramos didn’t press his advantage enough throughout the fight.

“It’s more of a chip on the shoulder type of thing,” Ramos said of the loss. “I’m looking more for the knockouts. I understand not every fighter’s gonna be knocked out, I’m aware of that, but on my side, I’m making sure I try everything to get the guy out of there.

“I’m preparing for every fight to get a knockout, to be aggressive enough to be able to get him out of there.” Ramos mentioned that knocking out an opponent who has never been stopped before is particularly satisfying – and Salgado is one such opponent.

Asked whether he would challenge the winner of Fundora-Booker, for which Fundora’s unified championship is on the line, directly after his fight, Ramos said, “Potentially, yeah. I don’t like to do much talking, but it makes bigger hype around the fights, and I think it’s time that we do start doing that. We’ll see what happens on March 22nd.”Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.