Jose ramirez boxer fight3/2/2024 ![]() ![]() I would just be outside with my cousins, playing baseball. “We didn’t have phones I didn’t have a computer until high school. “We were all the same, all living check by check,” he says. Ramirez enjoyed growing up in Avenal because “no one had more than the other.” And no active boxer works quite like he does to serve his people. Ramirez is The Athletic’s 2019 boxing Person of the Year not only for winning two title fights that ran his record to 25-0 and unified two of the four junior welterweight belts but because no active boxer means as much to his community as Ramirez does to the Central Valley. But Ramirez has become much more: a vocal advocate for water rights during the severe drought that parched California from 2011 to 2017 and for immigrants’ rights amid President Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric and policies. Ramirez’s rise from Olympian to pro prospect to 140-pound champion would have galvanized the region even if the fighter’s sole focus were the ring. ![]() The boxer who has long repped the Central Valley and fought for it, both inside and outside of the ring. They were not going to miss a chance to support the local hero turned 2012 Olympian. Undeterred, Ramirez’s fans from throughout the region braved the weather and dicey roads. The night of the Zepeda fight was historically rainy, temperatures dipped so low that the mountain pass connecting the Valley to Southern California froze over, closing a section of Interstate 5. Ramirez, who grew up about an hour south of Fresno, in the farm town of Avenal, has been selling out venues in California’s Central Valley since long before he became a champion.
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