Ray Beltran and Jose Pedraza put on a grueling display of a title fight tonight in Arizona. In the end, Pedraza had his hand raise. Isaac Dogboe also picked up a quick defense in the co-main event.
The opening round of the main event was uneventful. Ray Beltran (35-8-1, 21 KOs) plowed forward and tried to get his power shots going while Jose Pedraza (25-1, 12 KOs) largely stood his ground and jabbed in return. The fight really started in the second round. There Pedraza turned southpaw and landed a handful of beautiful power shots while working his jab well. He had Beltran bleeding too. The Mexican defending titleholder continued to struggle with the southpaw jab in the third. Jose also landed a stiff straight left that staggered his off balance for at the ten second warning to seal the round. Aided a bit of the Puerto Rican challenger coming out conventional at the start of the fourth, Ray finally got his offense going. He especially dug the body well. I had the fight even after its first third.
The fifth round was much closer than the previous few. Pedraza was even pressuring for parts of it. Both men got good work in. Surprisingly Jose continued to try to push the belt holder back in the sixth too. He did it for most of the round, but I didn’t see it serving him well. Ray Beltran is the better in fighter and it showed. Pedraza corrected the distance and returned to fighting at range as a southpaw in the seventh, but Ray still won the round as he carried his aggressive momentum forward. Jose did finish the round well though. Round eight was a sneaky good one for the challenger. Beltran still pushed forward and got his work in, but the biggest shots were landed by Jose Pedraza over the three minutes. I still had the fight even going into its final third.
Raymundo reasserted his right hand in the ninth before getting his left going in the ninth to take consecutive rounds. The timing on the left was a little strange as he had begun complaining about it hurting in between rounds, but Ray Beltran is nothing if not a tough guy in there. The first championship round started slow too with both combatants tired and clinching, but it turned dramatically part way through. Jose Pedraza landed a vicious uppercut from range that had the champ on the seat of his pants. He couldn’t find the finish, but he 10-8 right was massive in terms of scoring. The Sniper was comfortably controlling the twelfth and final round with his jab, but he removed all doubt by once again buzzing Beltran at the end of the fight. The challenger was straight beating Ray up in the corner to close the fight. In another context outside of the last ten seconds of the final round of a title fight, that was near stoppage stuff.
I scored the fight even in terms of rounds. Thanks to the knockdown, that gave Jose Pedraza a 114-113 win on my card. Official cards came back 117-110 twice with a 115-112 unanimously in favor of Jose Pedraza. These were wider cards than I expected for him on the road, but I thought he deserved the win. A big payday against Vasyl Lomachenko in December now awaits the new two division titleholder.
In the opener, Isaac Dogboe (20-0, 13 KOs) made predictably easy work of Hidenori Otake (31-3-3, 14 KOs) in the first defense of his WBO 122 lb belt. It wasn’t necessarily expected that the Ghanaian would come out and destroy Otake in one though. The Japanese challenger had never been stopped and Dogboe had only ever scored one other first round stoppage, but it wasn’t exactly shocking either. At 23 Dogboe is still developing in terms of strength and confidence while Otake is a very old super bantamweight at 37 who hadn’t competed at world level in some time. The finish came quickly following a left hook that sent Hidenori to the canvas. He rose and a flurry put him down again. Bravely he tried to fight on once more, but another follow up barrage caused the ref to stop it standing. Top Rank has positioned Dogboe and TJ Doheny to unify early next year. That would still be a fight Isaac is heavily favored it, but it was also certainly be more competitive than this.
