By Miguel Rivera
Last Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Jose 'Sniper' Pedraza suffered the first defeat of his pro career.
He was knocked out in seven rounds by unbeaten rising contender Gervonta Davis, who in the process captured Pedraza's IBF super featherweight world title.
After the fight, Pedraza complained that he struggled to make the super featherweight limit of 130. His next stop will be the lightweight division and he wants to gain another world title in the weight class.
But right now the Puerto Rican fighter does not get tired from pointing out that certain promotional aspects have not been on his side for some time, and he hopes to resume a very active career in 2017.
"I'll create my story at 135 pounds," Pedraza told El Vocero. "It's not a secret that I'm going up to that division. Ever since my defense with Stephen Smith I'vebeen talking about that. But now it is final that I will go up there to create my history and achieve what we wanted to achieve at 130 pounds: unification."
Pedraza, who has a record of 22-1 and 12KO's, has been promoted by the trio of Javier Bustillo, Lou DiBella and Gary Shaw. Having so many hands on his career has not been to Pedraza's liking for some time.
For his fight with Davis, Pedraza entered the ring with 273 days of inactivity.
"I have not seen Gary Shaw in a long time. I do not even know if he sold the his part of my contract to DiBella," he said.
"The truth is, what I consider to be as my working team are the people in my corner and the leader of it is my dad (Luis Espada). Of the promoters, there is nothing to see. I'm not interested in what they say. What I want them to do is not to leave me inactive, and for them to get to work. Let them find me opponents and do their jobs. They talk a lot about the interest that they have in me, that they will help me, but then they leave me stagnant. But if they really have interest in me, what I hope is that they treat me like a good investment. This is simply my feeling."
Pedraza is a Puerto Rican ex-Olympian who won a bronze medal at the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio, gold at the Central American Games in Mayagüez in 2010 and won silver at the 2009 World Cup in Milan.
"I'll take a break and come back stronger. This already happened with many others. Look at Vasyl Lomachenko, who lost once with Orlando Salido and look at where he is now. A loss is nothing. I will come back with more force."
