For Jose Pedraza, it was worth the wait.
Pedraza, at a crossroads in his career, was supposed to have fought slick Mikkel LesPierre on June 18 in Las Vegas but the fight was canceled because LesPierre’s manager tested positive for COVID-19. The fight was rescheduled for Tuesday. And Pedraza made the most of it.
The Puerto Rican put LesPierre down twice and otherwise outclassed him en route to a near-shut decision in the MGM Grand bubble in Las Vegas.
In the process, the 31-year-old from Cidra, who had lost two of his previous three fights, put the top 140-pounders on notice that he has plenty more to give.
“I had it all coming together for me,” Pedraza said through a translator. “In boxing you can’t have an off night. [On Tuesday] I was physically fit, mentally fit and spiritually fit. And no matter what happened [in the past] … I put it all together this evening because I couldn’t afford not to.
“That’s the kind of performance you get from me when I’m 100-percent focused.”
Pedraza (27-3, 13 KOs) took control of what was expected to be a competitive fight from the beginning, simply outboxing the Brooklyn-based Trinidad and Tobago native and consistently landing a variety of punches while taking few in return.
Pedraza landed 168 of 406 punches (41%), LesPierre 69 of 443 (only 16%), according to CompuBox. That tells the story.
LesPierre (22-2-1, 10 KOs) was hurt by a body shot in the second round but, after taking a flurry of punches as he covered up for dear life against the ropes, he survived.
Round 5 and the period before Round 6 were bizarre. Pedraza went down from a punch to the body about halfway through the stanza but it was later ruled that he tripped. He reciprocated about 30 seconds later by landing a multi-punch combination that put LesPierre down and hurt him.
Between rounds, referee Kenny Bayless, alerted to the trip, stopped the action, climbed through the ropes and conferred with his Nevada State Athletic Commission colleagues about whether to reverse the knockdown call. He did.
However, more than two minutes passed during the discussion, which allowed LesPierre time to recover fully from the punches he took in Round 5 and sucked some of the life out of the fight.
Pedraza cruised over the next few rounds before putting LesPierre down again in the 10th and final round. He followed with a flurry that staggered LesPierre and seemed close to scoring a knockout but LesPierre, brave if little else, survived to the final bell.
The scores: 100-88, 99-89 and 99-89. As TV analyst Tim Bradley put it at the end, “Vintage Pedraza.”
Indeed, the former junior lightweight and lightweight titleholder went from potential has-been to a viable contender with a single impressive victory. His goal is to win a junior welterweight title, thus becoming a three-division champion.
The 140-pound weight class is deep but he has his eye on either Jose Ramirez or Josh Taylor, both of whom hold two major title belts.
“I’ll take on any of the champions,” he said. “There are only two in the weight class that are … quality fighters. I just hope they accept my challenge?
In preliminaries, Albert Bell, a 6-foot 130-pounder from Toledo, Ohio, outclassed an overmatched Mark Bernaldez of the Philippines for 10 solid rounds to win a shutout decision.
Bell (17-0, 5 KOs) pumped his jab most of the fight, landed more than enough power shots to win rounds and used his feet to prevent the much shorter Bernaldez (20-4, 14 KOs) from cutting off the ring. In short, Bernaldez landed a minuscule percentage of the punches he threw.
Thus, all three judges scored the fight 100-90 in Bell’s favor.
Bell injured his right hand when he landed a hard punch in the final seconds of Round 9. In the 10th, trying to protect the hand, he jabbed his way to the final bell. He was seen with his hand immersed in ice afterward.
Also, junior welterweight prospect Elvis Rodriguez (7-0-1, 7 KOs) of the Dominican Republic remained unbeaten, stopping Danny Murray (5-4, 0 KOs) at 2:13 of the opening round of a scheduled six-rounder.
Rodriguez, who is trained by Hall of Famer Freddie Roach, put Murray down and hurt him badly with a short, stiff jab to the left eye. The Lanoka Harbor, N.J., fighter, whose orbital bone might’ve been damaged, was unable to continue.
And, in a six-round heavyweight bout, Nigeria-born Kingsley Ibeh (5-1, 4 KOs) of Phoenix defeated Kiwi Patrick Mailata (4-1, 2 KOs) by a majority decision. The scores were 57-57, 58-56 and 58-56.
