I’m not above causing a little trouble. So after asking Rick Ramos if his wife, Jessica McCaskill, might get the itch to break off her retirement after watching this Friday’s bout between Sandy Ryan and Mikaela Mayer, he told me to repeat the question so she could hear it.
“I’m done,” laughed the former two division champion, who hung up the gloves in July, following her May loss to Lauren Price.
And that’s that. As for her husband, who also was McCaskill’s coach and manager, he said, “It would have to be a perfect scenario, where it made sense, but unless she wanted to do it, then nah, it’s not a big deal to me.”
Ryan vs Mayer is a big deal for the post-McCaskill world of women’s boxing, a WBO welterweight title fight in Madison Square Garden’s Theater that could shake up an interesting division, and given the bad blood that’s broken out between the two, an extra layer of intrigue has been added. It’s got Ramos interested, and given that he’s worked against Ryan before, in her 2023 draw with McCaskill, he’s got a better view than most on what makes this a fight to watch.
“I truly think that if Sandy fights the right way – pressures, gets the left hook off to the body and just bullies her, punches and even pushes her after the bell and gets a little disrespectful – Sandy Ryan wins. I truly believe that the key to victory is pressure from Sandy and Mikaela Mayer not getting emotionally involved. If she (Mayer) has the talent to just stick and move, stick and move, she can win 6-4 very close. But I definitely think that her ego is going to get in the way, and I think Sandy Ryan could stop her or beat her up bad. And that’s just the way I feel. Obviously, we’ve been in the corner with Sandy Ryan, so I know she’s strong. But she’s got to pull the trigger faster. She’s got to come forward and she’s got to want to make it a fight.”
Ramos is spot-on in his analysis, as well as with the intangible of Mayer sticking to the game plan and not getting emotionally involved, which seems to have already gone out the window considering the drama surrounding Ryan working with Mayer’s longtime (and now former) coach, Kay Koroma
“Mikaela Mayer has got to focus on the fight and make it a boxing match,” said Ramos. “She’s so focused on everything else. That’s why I believe she loses. She’s just so focused on being heard, she’s focused on being the A side, she’s focused on letting everyone know that she still beat Baumgardner. She’s so focused on everything else. If she just went in there and boxed and used her talent, she probably would’ve won those fights (with Baumgardner and Natasha Jonas). And because she got distracted, I believe that’s a big part of why she lost those fights.”
It’s proof positive that at the top level of the sport the mental game is as important as the physical one. Ramos believes that the percentage isn’t 50-50, but a lot higher than that. Having that unbreakable mentality is something that McCaskill always had locked in, and Ramos is stressing its importance to the fighters he’s working with, most notably, unbeaten pros Eddie Olivares and Brandi Robinson, super middleweight up and comer Olivia Curry, and amateur standout Mariano Sandoval.
“It is 90% of the fight,” said Ramos, who was recently announced as an inductee into the Illinois Boxing Hall of Fame. “You can go back, and we rattled Cecilia Braekhus in the second fight so bad I thought she was going to quit in the second or third round. And I believe if Sandy Ryan had more confidence when she fought Jess, that she might’ve snuck one by us, but I didn’t think she fought confidently. I understand that conflict is part of Mayer’s game. But Mayer doesn’t have to do all that. She’s got the accolades as an amateur, she’s got the money behind her. What are you doing? You don’t need to be the enemy. I just think she’s taking a role that isn’t hers, where Jess and I had to take that role because we didn’t have gold medals, we didn’t have the amateur background, we didn’t necessarily have the money behind us, so we had to take a different position. But I don’t think Mikaela Mayer has to do it.”
So who wins on Friday night?
“I do think Sandy Ryan pulls away,” he said. “I think she’s going to come in here and show her strength and power and confidence. She has to. Because whoever loses is going to take two steps back.”
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