José Pedraza González vs. José Carlos Ramírez & Richard Torrez, Jr. vs. Allen Michael Melson RBR

Top of the hour.

Doors flying open soon @ Save Mart Arena in Fresno. Block of boxing coverage on ESPN+ begins at 5pm EST with a new episode of Max On Boxing, with Top Rank undercard picking up from 7:10pm EST. Main event ring walks projected for 10:30pm EST. Airing on Star Plus in most of Latinoamérica.

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Note: there'll be no simulcast on regular cable television. ESPN will be carrying a live NBA game, which...fair enough; meanwhile, on ESPN2 boxing is preempted by women's college gymnastics. Yep.

 

Montoya isn't as good as López, but enough in the same mold that yeah, +300 are tasty odds.

Remember that López absolutely brutalized him; it wasn't even close. We can pretty much consider Gabriel Félix Flores Jr. to have been exposed already; losing what's supposed to be his cherry-picked bounceback wouldn't be much of a shock.

 

(I know I'm not @CST80 and you didn't ask me, but there's my take anyhow )

 

Btw guys, the current General Forum message counts sits at 9,998,899 meaning we're just 1,101 posts away from ten million. So if this RBR even approaches the 1k mark - say, even just several hundred, combined with normal Friday night traffic in other miscellaneous threads - we're reaching that big milestone before the stroke of midnight.

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Funfact about the pro debut of RTJ in the co-main, which I've been hotly anticipating:

His final amateur record stands at 151-10 (93% winning rate), the cherry on top being that competitive showing versus Bakhodir Jalolov in the Olympic finals in Tokyo last August. His dad & trainer Richard Sr. had every bit as impressive a record of 226-36-4 (85%) and fought in the Olympic trials himself in 1984. He just missed out being teammates with the likes of Pernell Whitaker and Tyrell Biggs on a squad that ultimately brought home 9 gold medals for the USA. For some reason he never turned pro, instead opting to run the boxing club founded by Junior's abuelo Manuel in their home of Tulare and helping to coach up Central Valley youths. Ofttimes father-son tandems in the sport can turn sour, but this corner seems to be long on trust and short on ego so it could be the somewhat rare case of it working out for the best.

 

If we get the version of JCR that fought TTT, yeah, hard to feel optimistic for Pedraza. If we get him in disinterested light-sparring mode, though, and Pedraza rumbles his ass off... maaaaaybe a pick 'em.

 

The opponent for Kiki Torrez is on a low-key inspiring run of his own - Allen "Shenzi Eagle" Melson is on a 2-year, 6-win streak, victorious thrice apiece in 2020 & 2021 after having been stopped in his first three contests from 2018-19.

Nobody special, mind you; all were fellow novices - and he is hardly the most ambitious, "jump in the deep end" opponent ever seen in a pro debut - but we've also seen B-sides with records a heck of a lot worse than 6-3 in these situations.