Jose Pedraza-Richard Commey Battle To Draw

A hard fought Saturday night ESPN/Top Rank Boxing main event between two veteran fighters ended with no resolution. This, as former world champs Jose “Sniper” Pedraza and Richard Commey battled to a 10-round draw in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The scores were 97-93 for the Puerto Rican Pedraza, 96-94 for the Ghanaian Commey and then, the third card was 95-95,

Tonight's main event ends in a SPLIT DRAW #PedrazaCommey 😯 pic.twitter.com/DHlEx4bfFQ

— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) August 28, 2022

Commey, now 30-4-1, appeared to be in command early, including buckling Pedraza briefly with a left hand in the third round. However, an accidental clash of heads in round six seem to change the whole dynamic of the fight. This caused a cut over Commey’s left eye, and the  bleeding seemed to bother Commey as the bout continued. Pedraza came on with hard lefts out of the southpaw stance and continued to score on Commey in the late rounds.

He wobbled Commey at the end of round nine with a four punch combination along the ropes and it looked like Pedraza, now 29-4-1 might get a stoppage. However, Commey weathered the storm, but Pedraza continued to keep the pressure on as the fight concluded after 10 rounds. The unsatisfying draw has to be a disappointment for both fighters who were looking for a win that would put them in a bigger fight and pay day for them by Top Rank in the junior world to weight division in the future.

Earlier in the night three different heavyweights on the undercard did exactly what they were supposed to by disposing of their opponents. First Nigerian born former Olympian Efe Ajagba improved to 16-1, 13 KOs with a second round KO of Jozsef Darmos, Ajagba scored two knockdowns, the second of which caused the referee to waive the fight off at 1:15 of the second. Ajagba had beaten beaten in his last fight on a decision by Frank Sanchez in October on the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder III undercard in Las Vegas.

Then, U.S. Olympic Silver Medalist from the Tokyo games Richard Torrez of California improved to 3-0 with a vicious knockout of Marco Antonio Canedo. Torrez scored a hard left and then a quick left-wicked right combination that dropped Canedo face first to the mat. The referee did not bother to count giving Torre an impressive KO that kicked off the ESPN portion of  the Top Rank Boxing show.

Next up was Ohio heavyweight Jared “Real Big Baby” Anderson and he improved to 12-0 with 12 straight knockouts by disposing of Miljan Rovcanin. Anderson used a hard left followed by a big overhand right at the end of the second round to drop Rovcanin on his back, where he was counted out at the 3-minute mark. Anderson was coming off a hand injury that has sidelined him up until this point in 2022, but he is now clearly ready to get busier and rise up the heavyweight ranks as the top Americans in the division.