Jose Ramirez’s promoter is confident that his veteran trainer will man Ramirez’s corner Saturday night.

Bob Arum informed BoxingScene.com that Robert Garcia has passed multiple COVID-19 tests since failing one late last week that prevented him from working a corner last Saturday night in Las Vegas. Garcia returned to Las Vegas on Monday and is preparing to enter the Top Rank/ESPN “bubble” Wednesday, along with Ramirez and the rest of his team, for Ramirez’s WBC/WBO 140-pound title fight versus Viktor Postol at MGM Grand Conference Center.

Garcia, who tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this summer, failed another test that kept him from working with bantamweight prospect Robert Rodriguez last weekend. Henry Ramirez, another veteran trainer from Southern California, filled in for Garcia during a fight Rodriguez (9-0-1, 5 KOs) won by first-round technical knockout against Abel Soriano (10-1, 7 KOs) on the Joe Smith Jr.-Eleider Alvarez undercard at MGM Grand Conference Center.

Ramirez and Garcia will be tested twice more upon arriving in “the bubble” on Wednesday.

“He’s gonna be OK,” Arum told BoxingScene.com regarding Garcia. “He’s testing all the time and, so far, it’s all negative. You know, what happened to him – we’re finding out, and the [pro sports] leagues are gonna find out – what happened to [Garcia] happened to [Jamel] Herring. He had coronavirus. Then, he got retested and the virus had gone away.

“And so, he figured he was OK, as did Herring, and then he tested positive again. Then, when I asked the doctors, I said, ‘How could that be?’ And the doctor said, ‘Well, sometimes when they have coronavirus, even though it’s no longer transmittable, there’s little particles that remain and those get picked up on a test, and you get a positive, even though it really should’ve been a negative.’ ”

Herring’s optional WBO junior lightweight title defense against Jonathan Oquendo has been postponed twice this summer because Herring failed COVID-19 tests. The second postponement occurred July 13, the day Herring and Oquendo were supposed to weigh in for a main event ESPN was scheduled to televise July 14 from MGM Grand Conference Center.

Cincinnati’s Herring (21-2, 10 KOs) and Puerto Rico’s Oquendo (31-6, 19 KOs) have been rescheduled to meet September 5 at MGM Grand Conference Center.

As for Garcia, he is preparing to guide Ramirez through a 12-round fight that already has been postponed twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What we did, is we had [Garcia] sleep there [in Las Vegas last week],” Arum said, “not go out of the room, and take the test the next morning, before he left [for his home in California]. And that test came back negative. They wouldn’t allow him in the bubble. They wouldn’t allow him at the fights.

“They got the results, I guess, on Friday. And then he got tested right in front of me on Saturday morning. The result of that test was a negative. He’s now been tested [several] times, and all the tests have been negative. So, we expect him to be in the corner Saturday night.”

Ramirez (25-0, 17 KOs) will see his former trainer, Freddie Roach, across the ring when he opposes Postol (31-2, 12 KOs), Ramirez’s mandatory challenger. Roach trained Ramirez for 5½ years, until Ramirez hired Garcia less than two months after he won the then-vacant WBC super lightweight title by beating Amir Imam in March 2018. 

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.