Boxing Challenge: Ramirez decisions Pedraza

 Friday night's ESPN/Top Rank card from Fresno, California felt a little bit similar to anticipating a great day and only receiving a good one with two fights that were good action fights but a little less than I had hoped for.

In the main event, former WBC and WBO junior welterweight champion Jose Ramirez returned to the ring for the first time since his first career loss in a unification bout against Josh Taylor and won a clear but closely fought unanimous decision over former junior lightweight and lightweight champion Jose Pedraza.

Ramirez was the aggressor through and banked most of the early rounds before a mid-round rally by Pedraza to tighten the fight on the scorecards.

Pedraza's right eye began to swell around entering the late rounds and Ramirez began to score more frequently as Pedraza seemed to be unable to pick Ramirez's punches up and allowed the hometown fighter to pull away on the scorecards.

All three judges scored the fight 116-112 for Ramirez, which was the same as my scorecard in a fairly easy fight to score.

Ramirez appears likely to be in the mix for one of the four soon to be vacated junior welterweight titles and the clearest avenue to a championship would be with the WBC where Ramirez is rated second and would face top-ranked Jose Zepeda, who Ramirez won a close decision against in a title defense in 2019.

As for Pedraza, he suffered his second loss at junior welterweight (the other was to Jose Zepeda) in five fights and while he had acquitted himself well in losses to Ramirez and Zepeda, he may not be a title threat against the elite fighters of the division.

The co-feature was another fight that was filled with good action but wasn't quite as good as I had thought it might be as Joet Gonzalez stopped Jeo Santisima in the ninth round of a featherweight crossroads pairing.

There were some strong exchanges but Gonzalez really began to take over in the middle rounds and with Santisima taking a pounding in the seventh and eighth rounds, the referee told Santisima in the corner that he would be watching very closely in the ninth round for any signs of distress.

And even with Santisima firing punches back at Gonzalez, the stoppage was pretty quick in the ninth round.

Still, he was warned entering the round that he was being watched carefully, so the ending isn't as bad as it seemed if you have the total picture in hand.

I scored Gonzalez ahead after eight rounds 78-74.

Boxing Challenge- 

Vince Samano 29 Pts (1)

TRS 29 Pts (3)

Ramon Malpica 26 Pts (3)