Rafael Pedroza is set for his U.S. debut with hopes to spoil Ramon Cardenas’ first televised hometown headliner.
Both boxers made weight for their scheduled ten-round regional junior featherweight title fight this Friday from Boeing Center at Tech Port in San Antonio, Texas. Pedroza weighed right at the 122-pound divisional limit while Cardenas was 121.8 pounds for their Showtime-televised ShoBox main event.
The fight will mark the first time that Pedroza (15-0, 11KOs) will fight outside of his native Panama. The 26-year-old prospect is coming off back-to-back decision wins in his previous two outings on the year.
Cardenas (22-1, 11KOs) has won his last ten starts and fights in hometown for the third straight time. His biggest win to date came last July 9 when he outpointed Michell Banquez over ten rounds on a YouTube-aired bout preceding a Showtime tripleheader from Alamodome.
Argentina’s Mirco Cuello and Los Angeles’ Rudy Garcia also made weight for their scheduled ten-round featherweight co-feature bout. Cuello (11-0, 10KOs) was 125.2 pounds for his first stateside bout since December 2020 during his first year as a pro. Garcia (13-0-1, 2KOs) was 125.3 pounds for his second career ten-rounder.
Opening the Showtime-televised tripleheader, unbeaten knockout artist Freudis ‘Freddie’ Rojas Jr. (11-0, 11KOs) makes his second network appearance in just nine weeks. The second-generation boxer from Houston by way of Las Vegas was 146.8 pounds for a scheduled eight-round welterweight bout versus Los Angeles’ Saul Bustos (15-1-1, 8KOs) who was 146.7 pounds as he enters off his first career defeat.
Rojas made a splash in a seventh-round knockout of Diego Santiago Sanchez in the opening bout of a July 15 Showtime Championship Boxing tripleheader from Chelsea Ballroom at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The 6’2” welterweight southpaw went his deepest as a pro, having never previously gone past four rounds.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox