The partnership struck between Golden Boy and Riyadh Season this year will manifest with an eye-catching event featuring a plethora of Golden Boy fighters as well as a headlining unification bout between Mexican WBA cruiserweight champion Gilberto Ramirez and British WBO champion Chris Billam-Smith. Complementing the card within the co-main event will further be a significant non-title bout between two top American contenders; Jose Carlos Ramirez and Arnold Barboza Jr. Due to the wide number of Latino fighters participating on the card, the November 16th has been dubbed as “Latino Night” to commemorate Latino culture but will contrastingly be featured in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The first Golden Boy Promotions show where Riyadh Season, headed by General Entertainment Authority (GEA) chairman Turki Alalshikh, exerted its influence was the August 10th interim title bout between Serhii Bohachuk (24-2, 23 KO’s) and Vergil Ortiz Jr. (22-0, 21 KO’s) where the latter claimed the WBC interim super welterweight (154 lbs) title.
The upcoming November 16th event, however, will be the first event to officially showcase the partnership struck between the two entities, with the unification title bout between WBA cruiserweight (200 lbs) champion Gilberto Ramirez (46-1, 30 KO’s) and WBO champion Chris Billam-Smith (20-1, 13 KO’s) serving as the main attraction.
It will be a match that was sorely needed in the cruiserweight division with the last unification fight having occurred in 2018 between then-WBC and WBO cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk (22-0, 14 KO’s) and WBA champion Murat Gassiev (30-2, 23 KO’s) during the World Boxing Super Series (WBSS) cruiserweight tournament.
The co-main event between Jose Carlos Ramirez (29-1, 18 KO’s) and Arnold Barboza Jr. (30-0, 11 KO’s) has been confirmed to be a WBO super lightweight (140 lbs) final eliminator1, with the winner set to become the WBO mandatory challenger at 140 lbs―granting them the opportunity to challenge the current holder of the WBO title, Teofimo Lopez (21-1, 13 KO’s), in the near future. Ramirez and Barboza currently occupy the #4 and #1 spots on the WBO’s 140 lbs rankings respectively.
At minimumweight (105 lbs), American WBO champion Oscar Collazo (10-0, 7 KO’s) will be defending his title against Mexican challenger Edwin Cano Hernandez (13-2-1, 4 KO’s) who is currently on a two-match stoppage streak.
At 140 lbs, Mexican contender Oscar Duarte (27-2-1, 22 KO’s) will arguably be met with equal opposition when he faces American contender Kenneth Sims Jr. (21-2-1, 8 KO’s).
Further set to showcase their talents will be the #1-considered lightweight (135 lbs) Mexican contender William Zepeda (31-0, 27 KO’s) and American former super featherweight (130 lbs) world champion Tevin Farmer (33-6-1, 8 KO’s). Farmer notably lost during his last match, presenting his upcoming fight as more of a stay-busy fight for Zepeda rather than an actual competitive bout of relevance.
- A bout between two top-rated contenders to determine the mandatory challenger of a particular division pertaining to one of the sanctioning bodies. ↩︎
