But it took the veteran overcoming a rocky third round to do so as he managed to defeat Rances Barthelemy by unanimous decision. Judges inside the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California scored it 119-109, 119-109 and 118-110 all in Ramirez's favor. Though Barthelemy did enough in the hard-fought matchup to at least make the scores a little tighter.

After Ramirez set the tone early, Barthelemy unleashed a left hook and followed it with a barrage of punches in the third round, forcing Ramirez to drop to a knee with his hand on the canvas, though it was ruled a push off instead of a knockdown.

To Ramirez's credit, he battled back and recovered admirably in a back-and-forth fight which saw the former unified super lightweight champion threaten a stoppage in the 11th round, before ending the fight with a victory in tow, improving to 29-1 with 18 KOs.

“I felt great coming in, overly excited. I showed some good skills,” Jose Ramirez said on DAZN.

“I dominated most of the rounds. There was only one round where he could’ve scored a knockdown, but a lot of the fight he didn’t throw a lot of punches and he got overly excited. I think that was my mistake for being distracted in that moment of the round and keeping him in the fight. Overall, I'm just thankful I got the win.”