Rafael Espinoza may leave featherweight after Robeisy Ramirez rematch

Rafael Espinoza will already be sharing the same card as Emanuel Navarette and Oscar Valdez. Perhaps he will soon be sharing a weight class – and possibly the ring – with them as well.

Espinoza is scheduled to defend his WBO featherweight title against Robeisy Ramirez on December 7 in Phoenix. That will be a rematch of their December 2023 fight, when Espinoza edged Ramirez by majority decision to win the belt.

Headlining that same show is another rematch, this one featuring Navarette defending his WBO junior lightweight title against Valdez. Navarette unanimously outpointed Valdez in their first meeting in August 2023.

Carl Moretti, vice president of boxing operations for Top Rank – which promotes all four men – says that Espinoza may head to 130 next.

And that, in turn, could have a bearing on Charly Suarez, another junior lightweight who has become a regular on Top Rank shows. Suarez is presently rated No. 1 at 130 by the WBO. 

In his past three appearances on Top Rank cards, the 36-year-old from Manila in the Philippines has outpointed the 25-3 Yohan Vasquez and 15-6 Luis Coria and scored a third-round TKO over the 17-3 Jorge Castaneda.

“[Suarez’s] next fight will be determined with the outcomes of both fights on December 7. In the case Espinoza beats Robeisy, he might move up,” Moretti said during a Thursday meeting of the WBO’s ratings committee at the sanctioning body’s convention in Puerto Rico.

Such a move would make sense, given that Espinoza, 25-0 (21 KOs), stands 6-foot-1 and somehow drains his frame to the 126lbs weight class.

As for the order of operations at 130: Valdez is the WBO’s interim titleholder, and therefore Navarrete’s mandatory challenger. The WBO decided to put an interim belt on the line for the March 2024 fight between Valdez and Liam Wilson, as Navarrete was journeying up to lightweight to face Denys Berinchyk for the vacant WBO title.

“We have to first conclude the mandatory,” said newly elected WBO President Gustavo Olivieri. “Thereafter, the champion has 180 days to do another mandatory. Also bear in mind that a possible scenario will be that the winner of Espinoza-Ramirez, if Espinoza decides to move up, has the right to be installed as the mandatory automatically, as a former champion from one division to another. It’s still too premature to tell what’s going to happen, but we’re going to confer with the ratings committee and the championship committee, and in due course we will issue our ruling.”

David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2 and @UnitedBoxingPod. He is the co-host of the United Boxing Podcast. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.