Tell me about Eusobia Pedroza

Pedroza was a rangy, slippery and sometimes dirty fighter who was excellent both on the outside and on the inside.

His style was pretty typical of a lot of the fluid Panamanian defensive specialists but he had an extra dimension to his game with the tricks he developed over the years.
Great upperbody movement and footwork, very good speed and fairly good power...his body punching was very good also.

Though I think his dirtiness gets overblown...his fight with Laporte is down right evil and if that was one of the few fights you had seen of him, you would think he was the next Sandy Saddler or something.

Probably the best fight Ive seen of him was his destruction of Pat Ford.

Had the tendency to coast and give away rounds with erratic offense..and had some very close calls in his long reign but usually against top notch fighters.

Someone will soon give you a far more detailed account soon but I gotta run mate.

 

That's a very good analysis by Whatarock. He built Cecilio Lastra for the featherweight title in '78. Two years before that as a green fighter, he was blasted out in 2 rounds by Alfonso Zamora in an attempt at the Bantamweight title. It was a brutal stoppage and to Pedroza's credit that this didn't ruin him as sometimes happens with young fighters.
I would agree that the Patrick Ford effort is a great effort on his part. Too his credit, he often defended his title on the road, in such places as New Guinea, Korea, Charlotte, NC, Venezuela, and London. He had some efforts where his intensity wasn't quite top notch, such as against Lockridge and Bernard Taylor. Taylor was on his bicycle for the whole fight, but I expected a little more from Pedroza in that fight. I don't really think he ducked anybody, but fighters he missed were Ruben Castillo, Azumah Nelson, Pat Cowdell, and of course Salvador Sanchez. The WBA and WBC didn't play nice back then either, so unification fights vs Danny Lopez and then Sanchez were difficult to make.
My personal opinion is that he would've edged Nelson, but Sanchez would've found a way to beat him, but I wouldn't state either of those outcomes with great confidence. A matchup with Lopez would have been interesting because other than a green Juan Laporte, he didn't face many massive punchers after the loss to Zamora.
Like Whatarock said, he had that great fluid, rhythmic style of Panamanians such as Ismael Laguna and Ernesto Marcel, but the extra dimension of being able to incorporate questionable tactics (kidney punches, rabbit punches, holding hitting, pushing) seamlessly into his style. He made fouling look natural and I mean that as a compliment. The Laporte fight was way over the line though.
He was a great fighter and well worth watching then and now if you have a chance.

 

In addition to the fine comments already offered about El Alacran, I would suggest that he really brought the bolo punch to the highest level of cultivation. As noted as Gavilan was for it, the Kid mainly used it to headhunt. Pedroza hammered the body with it, and deflated the very well conditioned Lockridge in their first bout as they headed into the championship rounds. (Gil Clancy repeatedly kept deriding them as "arm punches," then sheepishly conceded a few rounds later that they obviously were taking their toll as Rocky slowed down noticeably.) With him, the bolo punch wasn't for show, but a legitimately potent weapon.

Eusebio sustained a trio of knockouts in 1975 and 1976 which suggest he did not have a first rate chin. Therefore, the quality of his defensive skill during his string of 20 consecutive FW Title wins needs to be more carefully evaluated and addressed than it has been, as he successfully defended against a number of challengers known for their power. (Lockridge 2X, LaPorte, Olivares, ect...) His final successful title defense was against former bantamweight titlist Jorge Lujan, who himself remained a very serious entity and got to Pedroza by beating Mario Miranda and stopping Ricardo Cardona. (Lujan, an overlooked and underrated champion, was never stopped by the way.) If Pedroza had opted for easier challengers than McGuigan in London, he could well have broken the record of 25 title defenses Joe Louis held for all divisions. (Joe did have his prewar "Bum of the Month" Club. Eusebio's long string of failed challengers were not derided in that way.)

There is a great deal of substance behind the challengers he defended against. Wilfredo Gomez defended his SBW crown against 5-9 Julio Hernandez, 2-0 Sakad Petchyindee (who I'll allow might have had the same extensive kickboxing experience Muansurin possessed), and 8-4-2 Raul Tirado. The least qualified challenger Pedroza had was perhaps Enrique Solis, who still very definitely had a genetic family pedigree. Many of his challengers either held other titles at some point, or challenged other champions. It's one of the most consistently solid resumes of any champion with more than 15 title wins, certainly up to 1986.

 

Some good posts here that i dont feel i can add to except to say Pedroza was a game fighter, as brave as they come and a talented individual who could handle himself in the ring no matter what the circumstances. I would say hes knocking on the door of the top 5 featherweights IMO

 

Olivares was more or less shot by the time Pedroza took him apart, to be fair. It was a game effort, but he had clearly lost more than a couple of steps by that point. Still, it's a fun one to watch as far as outright clinics are concerned. Pedroza took him apart from every angle in a faultless display.

 

That's right. However, I wanted to mention Olivares because of the combination of Ruben's power and Pedroza's questioned chin. Going in, Rock-a-bye had to be given a puncher's chance. Without benefit of hindsight, few live viewers were blinking.

As for his best performance, Pat Ford is a very strong candidate. He was coming off his surprising challenge of Sanchez (which some observers felt the tall Guyanan upstart won), and Cosell was broadcasting Pedroza-Ford live to the States on ABC from Pedroza's home, a fact which whipped Eusebio and the Panama City audience into a fever pitch. They all knew that if a title unification was ever going to take place with Sanchez, it would have to be sold in the US, and backed with American money, where Sal had all his nationally televised title fights and had made a fortune.

No question it was the most important fight of his career, and he made the absolute most of it in a flawless display. But he needed Sanchez far more than Sal needed him (which wasn't at all, especially considering the risk), and Pedroza's very possible best at the most crucial moment wasn't nearly enough. Then, when Sanchez got killed and LaPorte succeeded him, Pedroza did gain universal acknowledgment as the world's best featherweight for the duration of his reign. Still, he might have traded all that in for a massive unification payday with Sal. (Again, Sanchez got Gomez. What did he need Pedroza for? Gomez II would have been Sal's next super fight, probably after Pintor softened up Wilfredo for a second career ending stoppage defeat.)

 

You don't believe a fight between Sal and Pedroza would've come off if not for Sal's untimely death, Duodenum? I'd heard talks of that being the next step for Sal following the Nelson fight.

 

EB, I would like to think that eventually it might have come off, but the big story between Sanchez-Nelson and Sal's death that I read in the papers had to do with the fact that Sanchez did not feel good during that fight and yet produced a stoppage despite a sub par showing. (Nobody suspected at the time that Nelson would become his true successor.) It was a huge article, and mentioned not a word about Pedroza. Sal was as big a star in the United States as any non-English speaking fighter aside from Duran. (In fact, he was bigger than most of the American champions. His death wasn't just the lead sports story, it made national news headlines, the one major boxing obituary between Louis and Dempsey.)

No, I think if Sanchez-Pedroza was ever going to come off, it would have taken place prior to Sanchez-Nelson. The momentum for it that was generated by Pedroza-Ford was long since expended.

What the press was really discussing was a prospective move up in weight and challenge of Arguello. While most in the media projected that Alexis would stop him after spotting a few rounds to stick and move tactics, there were those who figured that Sal had the conditioning, speed and durability to make things interesting over the championship distance. Arguello was a much bigger star than Pedroza in the States (really a superstar), so Arguello-Sanchez would make sense from a business standpoint, especially since Sal wouldn't be risking his title.

 

I'd heard that as well, but it never seemed practical to me given the time-frame. Arguello was moving into 140 by that point, and Sanchez would've had to have moved up at least a couple of weight classes for it to have even come off without easing himself into them. Seems a strange fight to make.