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By Jake Tiernan: Heavyweight contender Jared Anderson will take a step up in class against the undefeated Dominican George Arias in the co-feature spot on the Shakur Stevenson vs. Shuichiro Yoshino card on April 8th on ESPN at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. The card kicks off at 10:00 p.m. ET.

It’s still not official that the 23-year-old Top Rank-promoted Anderson will be fighting the 31-year-old Arias, but that’s what’s being said, and it should be a good test.

Arias has recent pair of split decision wins over Alante Green and Cassius Chaney in the last two years, showing that he’s got some talent. Going into the fight with the much bigger 6’6″ Chaney, some people believed he would lose. However, Arias was able to get past the long reach of Chaney to work on the inside to grind out a narrow 10 round decision.

Thaboxingvoice is reporting the news of the big 6’4″ Jared Anderson (13-0, 13 KOs) back in action against George Arias (18-0, 7 KOs) in the chief support bout.

When will Jared Anderson & George Arias fight?

Anderson & Arias will be fighting on April 8th in the chief support spot on the Stevenson vs. Yoshino card on ESPN.

Jared is going to need major work on his defense for this fight because the short 5’11” Joe Frazier-esque Arias will pick him off with shots if he’s wide open and incapable of defending due to that area of his game being deficient.

Top Rank promoter Bob Arum believes Jared Anderson is a future heavyweight world champion. We’ll see about that.

There are bigger punchers in the division with better hand speed and far superior defensive skills. Unless Anderson fixes the holes in his game, he’s just going to be just another contender and will likely wind up a gatekeeper.

Anderson is coming off a sparkling second round knockout of journeyman Jerry Forrest last December. That was the first time in the Ohio native Anderson’s career that he’d been in with an opponent with power, and he initially had problems, taking big shots to the head from the 34-year-old.

Anderson seemed to lose his temper after getting nailed by a vicious right hand from Forrest late in the first round. From that point on, Anderson unloaded on a flurry of shots that quickly had Forrest in trouble.

In the main event, former two-division world champion Shakur Stevenson (19-0, 9 KOs) will battle  Shuichiro Yoshino (16-0, 12 KOs) in a WBC 135-lb title eliminator. The winner will be able to challenge undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney unless he vacates, which he’s expected to do.