José Pedraza González vs. Javier Molina Casillas & Efe Ajagba vs. Jonathan Rice RBR.

Molina barely avoided the knock out there. Small victories.

 

I'm willing to believe the first was unintentional. The second one came after he realized, "Oh, right, it's MORA," and he let Molina have it.

 

Ajagba got decked?

 

Is Ajagba still trained by Ronnie Shields?
Because that guy does not know how to teach defense at all.

 

Ajagba has always just been people projecting on him that he’s decent. He’s not a fighter at heart. He looks the part. But has never impressed me in the ring.

 

Ajagba, errrr yeah,

 

Ajagba obviously didn't look good. Rice again showed how open he is to be countered, especially by the right hand.

The one positive from that fight is that Ajagba at least showed he can listen to instructions, he made the adjustment to jab to the body as his corner advised after the bad 4th round and that changed the direction of the fight. If he can show that willingness to listen to his corner and learn new things then maybe he can improve but right now he's looking vulnerable, too many wholes in his game, being big and powerful only gets you so far.

 

I still believe he can become a legitimate top 10 contender.
He hasn´t looked impressive in a while, but he has been putting in the rounds. So there is that.

 

Ramirez - I'm both impressed and unimpressed, but I struggle to understand why on the latter. He counters really well and has very good footwork. Lacks pop but so do a lot of guys at that weight. He didn't do too much wrong last night and really did some nice looking stuff but there's something about him I cannot buy into. The impression I get is that he doesn't have fight in him. I cannot explain why I think that but I really do

Ajagba - He fights how some of us pretend AJ fights. Very stiff and predictable. His power seems legit but I'm concerned at how fearful he was of Rice's right hand. OK boxing sensibly won him the fight but he didn't look good doing it and Rice was still able to land. He shouldn't be having problems with a guy like Rice.

Pedraza - Really enjoyed his performance. Some lovely proactive head movement and effective purposeful switching. First couple of rounds were close although I edged them to Pedraza myself. Molina had trouble nailing his rhythm thanks to his feinting and quick countering. Did the headclash change things for Molina? Hard to say really. I always figured Pedraza was the significantly better boxer of the two and his cut was cleaned up pretty well.

Not a great card but the main event was an OK watch.

 

Pedraza was excellent! Very good fight from him vs Molina. Everything was working

 

Rice came in 18 pounds lighter that against McKean, usually he's always over 280 pounds heavy.
If Rice still slowed down it was because of Ajagba's body jabs. Rice had McKean hurt and was able to hurt Yoka multiple times, so Ajagba's chin can't be that bad after all.
Ajagba is clearly a work in progress, but this was the first fight after the pandemic and with his new coach, he'll need a few more fights before he puts it all together.

 

Wasn't much of a statement of intent by Ajagba given two other prospects have put away Rice. I wouldn't trust him to beat stateside gatekeepers like Breazeale and Washington on that showing.

 

Pedraza has superb rhythm and movement. Great fun to watch him work his craft.