RIVERSIDE, California -- In a sport that's loud, mean and profane, Jose Ramirez is quiet, earnest and humble to a fault. He's faithful and stands tirelessly for his people -- the farmworkers of California's Central Valley.
COVID-19 relief? Immigration reform? Water rights?
He's all-in. Everything Ramirez does -- from his public service to his straight-ahead fighting style -- is suffused with a sense of duty and virtue.
And as he prepares for the formidably skilled Jose Pedraza while coming off the first loss of his decade-long professional career, it occurs that maybe that's the problem.
"He's too nice of a person," says his trainer, Robert Garcia. "We can't have Jose thinking, 'God is watching me and if I do one thing wrong, he's gonna punish me.'"
Don't misunderstand. Garcia isn't against nice people. And for the record, he's pro-God, too. In fact, having been born to immigrant farmworkers himself, Garcia believes in the same causes as Ramirez. It's just that humility, virtue and good manners each have their place. And it's not in the ring.
"Jose's got to have that animal mentality," Garcia says.
A guileful fighter, preferably, one who's merciless yet still possesses ring smarts. Kind of like the guy who beat Ramirez and took his two belts back in May, the now-undisputed 140-pound champion, Josh Taylor. "Josh is a nice guy," his trainer, Ben Davison, told me then. "But in the ring, he's spiteful. There's an art to being a spiteful fighter."
And it was on full display fight week at Virgin Hotels, Las Vegas. Just after the weigh-in, an especially churlish Taylor confronted Ramirez by an elevator bank. Then he pushed him. You could tell Ramirez -- who expects people to be as gentlemanly as he is -- wasn't used to getting pushed like that. There was some screaming and a melee of sorts, but now as then you couldn't help but wonder if Taylor had gotten in Ramirez's head.
"I thought he didn't," Ramirez all but conceded in our recent conversation. "But you never know. It might have worked to his advantage."
The following night, with all four belts at stake, Ramirez charged across the ring early in the sixth round. If it was quintessentially Ramirez, it was also the kind of valor that leaves a fighter vulnerable. Taylor put him down with a beautiful slip-counter.
"I came in overly committed," recalls Ramirez, whom the judges had winning the first half of the bout. "But it was nothing serious. The real mistake came in the seventh."
He's referring to an ambiguous moment with 33 seconds remaining in the round, and the fighters engaged at close quarters. Referee Kenny Bayless reaches in and taps Taylor on the arm. It's a split-second, but it's enough to wonder, as the ever-respectful-of-authority Ramirez did, whether Bayless would separate them. He did not. And just as the ref pulled back, Taylor put Ramirez down again, this time with a perfect left uppercut. It was the worst Ramirez had ever been hurt.
"I think he grew some confidence and took control of the fight after that knockdown," says Ramirez, who, in typical Ramirez fashion, fought on and lasted the full 12 rounds.
Still, those knockdowns were the difference.
"I think I lost the fight because of my mistakes."
He looked quite uncomfortable, though, saying as much. Ramirez has a champion's pride. It obligates him to declare that any defeat is correctable. Just the same, he's wary of anyone saying he's making excuses. That would be bad form, and bad form is anathema to Jose Ramirez.
"Taylor's a great fighter, can't take anything away from him," says Garcia. "He did the right things, made the right adjustments. He did what he had to do to get into Jose's head, and I think that's where the mistakes were made."
When it was done, "Spiteful Josh" morphed back into "Nice Josh" and made his way into Ramirez's dressing room. "Jose told us what Taylor said," recalls Garcia. "'I respect you. It was nothing personal. It was just my job to get into your head.'"
If there's an irony here, it's that Garcia made his name, and his fortune, working with fighters who were more like Taylor -- at least in terms of temperament -- than Ramirez. They were a procession of badasses: Fernando Vargas, Brandon Rios, Antonio Margarito. And don't forget Marcos Maidana, as I cannot forget Garcia contemplating the significance of Maidana's tats and the quarter-sized crater of scar tissue left by a bullet wound in the middle of his back.
"That's what we need," Garcia declared.
But that's not Jose Ramirez, whose own contemplations have centered on something he hadn't experienced since Aug. 2, 2012, when he lost on points in his second bout of the London Olympics. "It took me a while to really accept it," he says. "To be completely honest, when I got home I was embarrassed to go out. It was a huge opportunity and I feel like I blew it. I wasn't happy with myself."
He stayed on his farm, avoided "the city," as he calls Fresno, and began to sleep late. By the time he would wake, his longtime partner, Marisol, had already returned from bringing their 6-year-old son, Matteo, to school. "I would pick him up and just stay at home," he says. "I spent a lot of time with the people from my early life, very humble people and did very basic things. Instead of going out to fancy dinners, we'd just barbecue at the ranch, sit on buckets and talk for hours ... just kind of reflect on everything we've been through."
What did it teach you? I wonder.
"It was more of a reminder," he says. "Life is tough, you know?"
And what did you tell Matteo?
"He's old enough to ask questions, very honest, innocent questions. 'Dad, are you still a champion?' It was difficult to answer because I am a very prideful father and I never wanted my son to see his father lose ...
"I would explain to him [that] sometimes being a great champion is getting up and continuing moving forward. ... He's a smart kid. He understood. He goes, 'Dad, I know you lost, but it's OK. You're still my champion."
It's difficult to see a good man in this kind of pain. But at some level, the fighter -- certainly a fighter such as Jose Ramirez -- believes in the sanctity of anguish. Pain, after all, is an agent of transformation.
"Maybe I needed this loss," Ramirez concedes. "Maybe I needed to go through this to become better."
I'm not sure if he means a better fighter or a better man. Nor am I sure he even makes that distinction. Still, by any measure, the crafty Pedraza -- a former Olympian and two-weight world champion currently ranked at No. 6 by ESPN at 140 pounds, and in the top 10 of two sanctioning organizations -- is a curious choice for a comeback fight.
"I wouldn't have picked it," says Garcia.
It's the virtuous choice, of course. "I want to earn my position," says Ramirez. "I want to earn it by facing the best."
What do you want people to see, I ask, in your first fight back?
"A champion. Someone who's willing to fight the best."
What do you expect from yourself?
"To get those belts back. God-willing, after this fight, I'll get that world title fight."
And what will be different?
"No mercy for anybody in the ring."
Amen.