ESPN 8/24 Ray Beltran vs Jose Pedraza (WBO Lightweight Title) / Dogboe vs Otake (WBO 122 Title)

[patscorpio]

Beltran-Pedraza and Dogboe-Otake will air live on ESPN and ESPN Deportes at 10:30 p.m. ET, with undercard action streaming live beginning at 7:30 p.m. ET. on ESPN+ — the recently-launched multi-sport, direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service from The Walt Disney Company's Direct-to-Consumer & International segment in conjunction with ESPN.

Main Event

Beltran (35-7-1, 21 KOs) is a story of perseverance who finally broke through as a world champion five month shy of his 36th birthday. In his last bout, an ESPN-televised contest against Paulus Moses on Feb. 16 in Reno, Nevada, Beltran dug deep to win the vacant WBO lightweight title by unanimous decision. The scores — 117-111, 117-111 and 116-112 — did not reflect the back-and-forth nature of the bout. Once Manny Pacquiao’s chief sparring partner, Beltran had three previous cracks at a world title, most notably a 2013 draw against Ricky Burns that most ringside observers felt should have been a clear Beltran victory. The following year, he lost a wide unanimous decision to pound-for-pound elite Terence Crawford, who had beaten Burns to win the WBO lightweight crown. Beltran, a Phoenix resident who is originally from Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico, will be fighting in his adopted home state for the first time since 2005.

Pedraza (24-1, 12 KOs), from Cidra, Puerto, is on a mission to become a two-weight world champion. A former IBF junior lightweight world champion who made two successful defenses of his title, he lost his belt via seventh-round TKO to Gervonta Davis in January 2017. Following a 14-month layoff, he moved up to the lightweight division and signed a promotional contract with Top Rank. Pedraza is 2-0 as a lightweight in 2018, winning an eight-round unanimous decision against Jose Luis Rodriguez on March 17 and a 10-round unanimous decision against Antonio Moran on June 9 as the co-feature to the Terence Crawford-Jeff Horn welterweight title bout in Las Vegas.

Undercard

Dogboe (19-0, 13 KOs) established himself as one of boxing’s best young champions in 2018 with a pair of signature victories. He knocked out Cesar Juarez in the fifth round on Jan. 6 in his hometown of Accra, Ghana, to win the interim WBO junior featherweight title. On April 28 in Philadelphia, Dogboe won the title in dramatic fashion, surviving a first-round knockdown to stop Jessie Magdaleno in the 11th round in a Fight of the Year contender. A 2012 Olympian, Dogboe had a rapid rise through the pro ranks, winning the WBO Oriental and WBO Africa featherweight titles en route to junior featherweight title contention. Boxing is in the Dogboe lineage as his father/trainer, Paul Dogboe, once served as a boxing coach and a physical instructor in the British Army.

Otake (31-2-3, 14 KOs), from Tokyo, has been a professional for more than 12 years and is riding a nine-bout winning streak dating back to Nov. 22, 2014. On that day, he challenged Scott Quigg for the WBA super bantamweight title, dropping a unanimous decision. He won the vacant Oriental and Pacific Boxing Federation (OPBF) title on March 17, 2017 with a unanimous decision against Jelbirt Gomera. Otake defended the OBPF title three times, most recently scoring a 10th-round TKO over Brian Lobetania in Tokyo on March 13.

 

[patscorpio]

Photos: Isaac Dogboe, Hidenori Otake - Ready For Title Scrap

The stakes are high for WBO lightweight world champion Ray Beltran and challenger José "Sniper" Pedraza, with the winner expected to fight WBA lightweight champion Vasiliy Lomachenko later this year. (photos by Mikey Williams).

Beltran and Pedraza met at the final press conference for the next edition of "Top Rank on ESPN", which will take place Saturday evening at the Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona (10:30 ET/7:30 PST).

In the co-feature, Isaac "Royal Storm" Dogboe will make the first defense of his WBO junior featherweight title against Japanese challenger Hidenori Otake. And, in a six-round super featherweight special attraction, 2016 U.S. Olympian Mikaela Mayer will make her long-awaited ESPN network debut against former world title challenger Edina Kiss.

WEIGHTS

• Ray Beltran 134.6 lbs vs. José Pedraza 134.4 lbs
(WBO Lightweight title - 12 Rounds)

• Isaac Dogboe 121 lbs vs. Hidenori Otake 121.4 lbs
(WBO Junior Featherweight title - 12 Rounds)

• Mikaela Mayer 129.4 lbs vs. Edina Kiss 128.6 lbs
(Super Featherweight - 6 Rounds)

• Arnold Barboza Jr. 141.6 lbs vs. Luis Solis 142 lbs
(Super Lightweight - 10 Rounds)

• Antonio Lozada Jr. 137 lbs vs. Hector Ambriz 136.6 lbs
(Lightweight - 8 Rounds)

• Francisco De Vaca 124.4 lbs vs. Jesus Serrano 126.8 lbs
(Featherweight - 8 Rounds)

• Carlos Castro 121.4 lbs vs. Diuhl Olguin 121.2 lbs
(Super Bantamweight - 8 Rounds)

• Robson Conceicao 129.8 lbs vs. Edgar Cantu 129 lbs
(Super Featherweight - 8 Rounds)

• Trevor McCumby 172.4 lbs vs. Jessie Nicklow 169.8 lbs
(Light Heavyweight - 8 Rounds)

• Sagadat Rakhmankul 150 lbs vs. Christian Aguirre 151.2 lbs
(Super Welterweight - 6 Rounds)

• Breenan Macias 116.6 lbs vs. Philip Adyaka 118.4 lbs
(Bantamweight - 4 Rounds)

 

[Recca Gatsby]

lol damn why is this thread so dead???

 

[aceboon]

shyt won't start until 11 or after with the way this football game going

 

[patscorpio]

shyt won't start until 11 or after with the way this football game going

shyt ends soon..thank goodness

 

[patscorpio]

airing on espn news channel for now until that football game is done

 

[patscorpio]

that didnt take long lol

 

[Big D Bangston]

Damn only the 1st round and i missed a lot

 

[patscorpio]

otake better get his defense on

 

[Big D Bangston]

Doggy gettin it done

 

[patscorpio]

i dont know what otake was thinking ...get on your damn bike lol

 

[aceboon]

Smh Dogboe should have got that kind of look on ESPN, bum ass college football teams shouldn't have pushed this card to ESPNNews

 

[staticshock]

this nikka Bradley

 

[patscorpio]

dogboe needs to get his unification on..get vargas, eoman, or the irish cat that became champ in there

 

[staticshock]

I feel like Bradley is saying his name wrong on purpose now