By Jake Donovan

After delivering concussive knockouts through the years, Librado Andrade’s career was given a devastating hit Friday evening after suffering a shocking majority decision loss to Aaron Pryor Jr.

Scores were 95-95 even and 96-94 (twice) for Pryor Jr in their Telefutura-televised main event, which aired live from Fantasy Springs Casino in Indio, California.

Andrade had knockout on his mind from the opening bell, a tall statement – literally and figuratively – considering that the 6’4” Pryor Jr. has never been dropped or stopped as a pro.

It ultimately proved to be his undoing, as Pryor Jr found success in jabbing and moving, with the primary objective to stay out of harm’s way, which made for a bit of a frustrating evening among the paying patrons who looked forward to Andrade’s usual entertainment value.

After sticking and moving for most of the first half, Pryor Jr ditched the sticking part over the final five rounds, expressing little to no interest in exchanging punches with the cement-fisted Andrade.

Still, it was up to the Mexican veteran to do something to prevent a retreating opponent from remaining at bay, and he came up well short.

Andrade came close to flooring Pryor Jr in the sixth, smothering him along the ropes and causing him to drop to the canvas, although it was accurately ruled a slip. Ironically, the sequence came moments after Pryor Jr landed his best punch of the fight, a long right hand that caught Andrade flush on his cast-iron chin.

Boos began to fill the venue in the seventh, namely due to Pryor Jr’s touch and go style, which disallowed Andrade to mount any sort of sustained offensive attack.

More of the same came about in the eighth, though the crowd woke up in the ninth round after an overzealous Andrade allowed his forward momentum to carry him into Pryor Jr in a sequence that would’ve qualified as a takedown if it wrestling instead of boxing.

By the end of the night, even Pryor Jr’s corner was begging for the 32-year old to dig deep and leave it all in the ring. But as his Hall-of-Fame father explained during fight week, version 2.0 simply was not that type of fighter. As a result, the two combatants stumbled across the finish line.

However as it turned out, Pryor Jr seemed to be the only one to know the score – unofficially or otherwise.

Andrade danced as hard as he could to produce action of any kind, but could do no more than to chase a retreating Pryor Jr around the ring. The fight ended with Pryor Jr pushed through the ropes and nearly out of the ring, which given the action – or lack thereof – preceding the sequence offered a bit of poetic justice to the evening.

Yet and still, the outcome gives PryorJr a push of a different kind, even if few network executives will be in a hurry to have him back on the screen anytime soon. Regardless of how it came about, a win is still a win in this stage of his career, as he scores his biggest to date in improving to 16-3 (11KO).

Andrade, who seemed genuinely stunned by the outcome, continues his recent pattern of lose one, win one. The loss is the third over his last five fights as he falls to 29-4 (22KO). The other two losses over that stretch came to current super middleweight titlist Lucian Bute, with his lone other defeat coming four years ago against then unbeaten Mikkel Kessler.

Heading into the evening, Andrade could boldly state that he’s only lost to the very best. That statement changes considerably, even if Friday’s verdict was wide open to debate. Given the fact that the fight shouldn’t have been that close to begin with, the crowd-pleasing contender needs to reconsider his means to climb towards one more title shot.

The telecast opened up with Andrade’s brother, Enrique Ornelas (31-7, 20KO) recovering from a knockdown to take a unanimous decision over Hector Hernandez (10-4-2, 4KO) in their eight-round co-feature.

Scores were 78-73 across the board, though not entirely indicative of the action that took place.
    
Both bouts were presented by Golden Boy Promotions.

Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Broxingscene.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/JakeNDaBox or submit questions/comments to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com.