$70 a day after I pay $5 for the bus ride. On the farm you would spend 10 hours bending down and picking bell peppers for $7.50 an hour.

You wake up at four in the morning, be ready by 4.30am, walk down to the liquor store where he picked us up. “I went with my buddy because his uncle was a crew boss and he drove the bus ,” Ramírez explains. So he found himself a job in the school vacation. He wanted new trainers but he didn’t want to ask his parents for money. Young José knew the back-breaking work people did on the surrounding farms, picking crops. This belt of land supplies more than half of the fruit and vegetables the entire US consumes every year. He explains that, in 2007, when he was 14, he still lived in Avenal, a little town in the central valley of California. Ramírez is an American of Mexican descent and his ethnicity and family’s roots have shaped his political outlook. Ramírez knows the challenge he faces against Taylor and believes he will prevail, but we begin with the reasons for his activism.

The winner will become boxing’s only current undisputed world champion. Ramírez, the WBC and WBO light-welterweight world champion, fights Scotland’s Josh Taylor, who holds the IBF and WBA titles, in a fascinating unification contest in Las Vegas on Saturday night. J osé Ramírez has been described as the most politically active boxer since Muhammad Ali and, in his riveting company, it does not take long to understand there is depth and truth to a statement that might initially sound like a snappy soundbite.

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