The Cuban boxer Robeisy Ramírez launched a barrage of criticisms against his compatriot Julio César La Cruz during his appearance on Thursday on the podcast “La Hora del Tiza”, where he revealed a personal rivalry that has lingered since their days together on the national team of Cuba.
“El Tren” recalled that within the national team, he was the one who dared to speak up when the officials made unfair decisions, while the others remained silent. “The ones who had been there longer didn’t say anything, starting with the snitch Julio César La Cruz. He never said anything in favor of his teammates,” claimed the man from Cienfuegos.
Ramírez went further by describing La Cruz's behavior outside the ring: he accused him of encouraging his teammates to go out partying only to later inform the coaches on them. “He was one of those snitch party-goers who would coax you into going out. The next day, when someone had a massive hangover and didn’t train, he would be there at practice saying, 'Look at him, drunk, because he went off to who knows where last night,'” he recounted.
"He was always a snitch, a troublemaker, and a fool for the bosses," declared the former world champion of the World Boxing Organization (WBO) in the featherweight division.
The two-time Olympic champion (London 2012 and Rio 2016) was careful to separate his personal criticisms from the sporting evaluation of La Cruz, whom he acknowledged as an effective boxer within the amateur system despite his unflashy style.
"One sees that ugly hand movement and running back and forth. I understand all that, but they didn't beat me. The judges allowed him to do all of that. The referees didn't say: 'Stop and square up.' They let him do it, and that's how he got those results," he explained.
However, he made it clear that the hostility goes far beyond sports. "One thing has nothing to do with the other. I’m at odds with him to the death, and everyone knows it. Publicly, I have no respect for him or anything related to him, but in boxing, they allowed his ugly boxing style and he won," he stated.
It is not the first time that Ramírez has publicly taken aim at La Cruz. In July 2021, following the Tokyo Olympic Games, he called him "the dictatorship's kneeler" after the boxer from Camagüey shouted "Homeland or Death, We Shall Overcome!" upon defeating the Cuban-Spanish Enmanuel Reyes, a gesture that the then-ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel celebrated by calling him personally.
Ramírez left the national team in 2018 during a training camp in Mexico, where he walked away with a backpack during a team lunch, turned a corner, and got into a car that was waiting for him. Since then, he has built a professional career in the United States that culminated in winning the WBO world title in 2023.
At the time of the statements, the fighter from Cienfuegos had been out of the ring for over seven months. His last performance ended in a technical knockout in the sixth round against Rafael «El Divino» Espinoza in December 2024, when he had to withdraw due to an orbital fracture. In May of this year, his highly anticipated return to the ring was canceled at the last minute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, under circumstances he himself reported as irregular.
La Cruz, for his part, remains integrated into the sports system of the Cuban regime. The two-time Olympic champion (Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020) and five-time amateur world champion has been designated as the flag bearer for Cuba alongside Leyanis Pérez at the 2026 Central American and Caribbean Games in Santo Domingo, where he leads the island's boxing delegation in search of his fourth regional crown.
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