By Sam Volz: Heavyweight prospect Jared Anderson took care of business last Saturday night, stopping Miljan Rovcanin (24-3, 16 KOs) in the second round with a hard right hand in their scheduled eight round bout on ESPN at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
Anderson focused on throwing jabs and left hooks to the body of Rovcanin in the second round, which softened him up for the big right hand that Jared dropped him at the end of the sequence.
It looked to some like Rovcanin could have gotten up after being knocked on his backside by Anderson, but he appeared unwilling to try and get up to resume fighting. It was a decent right hand from Anderson, but not a huge shot that you see from many heavyweights in the division.
Rovcanin had earlier been knocked out in the third round by non-puncher Agit Kabayel, which was likely the reason he was chosen to fight Anderson. The punch resistance wasn’t there for Rovcanin, and that made him the ideal opponent for Anderson to shine against.
Despite getting an early knockout, the 22-year-old Anderson (12-0, 12 KOs) showed a lot of holes in his game on defense, as he was hit a lot by right hands from Rovcanin, and that can’t be happening against this level of opposition.
Whenever Anderson was throwing, he was leaving himself open for right hands from the 28-year-old Rovcanin, and he took full advantage of the situation by frequently nailing ‘Big Baby’ with hard shots.
Showing frustration, Anderson hit Rovcanin on the break with a cheap shot in the second round and was subsequently warned by the referee. The punch knocked Rovcanin’s mouthpiece out, as he wasn’t expecting it.
Hopefully, we’re not going to see Anderson resorting to fouling his opponents to gain an edge in the future, as that’s not the kind of thing that one would like to see for a heavyweight that Top Rank and ESPN are so high on.
“I was very calm. I was very patient. Actually [coach Darrie Riley] was more nervous than I was as usual, though,” said Anderson after the fight. “I felt very relaxed, pretty much the most relaxed I’ve ever been.
“I heard my coach tell me to switch [to southpaw]. I listened to him as always, so that was really the reason I switched.”
Anderson is reportedly interested in fighting the winner of the Andy Ruiz Jr vs. Luis Ortiz fight on September 4th. That’s a pipe dream on Jared’s part, as he’s NOT ranked in the top 15 by the WBC, and he has virtually nothing to offer the winner or even the loser of that fight.
Top Rank isn’t crazy enough to throw a green heavyweight like Anderson in with the well-seasoned professionals like Ruiz or Ortiz because nothing good could from that.
If a lower-level heavyweight like Rovcanin was able to touch Anderson as often as he did with right hand, you shudder to think what Ruiz and Ortiz would do to him.
Anderson is being hyped as the U.S best prospect at heavyweight, but you can argue that’s a bunch of baloney. He’s too flawed to be the best prospect that America has gotten.
On the undercard of last night’s Top Rank card, 2020 Olympic silver medalist Richard Torrez Jr (3-0, 3 KOs) looked considerably better than Jared Anderson, stopping Marco Antonio Canedo (4-3, 2 KOs) in just 44 seconds of the first round.
Torrez dropped Canedo twice in the round to get a scary-looking knockout. While Torrez Jr is quite small for the heavyweight division at 6’1″, 225 lbs, he’s got the kind of power that you like to see for a young prospect.
For Torrez Jr to have any shot at winning a world title, he’ll need to develop his defense to be more like Oleksandr Usyk because he’s going to have problems when he starts taking on the bigger heavyweights in the division.
We saw what the lanky 6’7″ Uzbek Bakhodir Jalolov did to Torrez Jr in the amateurs, knocking him out twice with big left-hand shots. You got to believe that a big, rangy heavyweight with a long reach will be able to do the same thing to Torrez Jr in the pro ranks.
Ideally, what Torrez Jr should do is move down to bridgerweight and go after the title. There’s no money in that weight class, but it’s one in which Torrez Jr is capable of winning a belt.
