The Defence of El Alacr

Yesterday(February 3rd 1985) was 36yrs since Eusebio Pedroza put in what he believed was his finest performance against Jorge Lujan. Pedroza is sometimes overlooked, perhaps because he was from Panama boxing at a time one of the legends of Boxing Roberto Duran was around(Panama also had the likes of Ismael Laguna, Ernesto Marcel amongst others who were world class) and also because Pedroza was in the Featherweight division which was the same as Salvador Sanchez. The two were most likely heading for a mega bout but for Sanchez’s untimely death in 1982 so despite Pedroza’s seven year reign as Featherweight World Champion, maybe the enigma created by an early death for Sanchez has forever taken the headlines for Featherweight boxing in the 1980’s.

Pedroza was a big Featherweight, standing around 5’9 tall and he was known for being a fighter who really bought it on down the stretch in the championship rounds of a fight. A hard hitter he was also very elusive and possessed a very slippery defence and in the video below I take a look at one of the defensive techniques he used which was called the slide and pull.

Now the slide is a technique in which you slide or roll under the punches, generally you would slide under the right hand and then slide back out under the left hook – as commonly the left hook is the punch which follows a right hand(if there is an ensuing punch in the combination). This is an old school move and I have posted videos about this in the past, Sugar Ray Robinson has been used as an example as has Nicolino Locche. Pedroza though would use the slide and pull – here he would slide under the right hand but pull back from the left hook and then often follow up the pull with a counter punch to an opponent who had just missed throwing his punches at Pedroza.

Eusebio Pedroza was an excellent boxer and when it comes to who would have won had he fought Salvador Sanchez, it would have been a very very close battle indeed and could have gone either way…