Top Rank has decided that unbeaten up-and-comer Julian “Hammer Hands” Rodriguez is ready to step up in competition.

So, Rodriguez will face the stiffest test of his career when he squares off with former two-division world titleholder Jose “Sniper” Pedraza in a 10-round junior welterweight bout on June 12, Top Rank chairman Bob Arum told BoxingScene.

The fight will serve as the co-feature of the Top Rank Boxing on ESPN card headlined by former featherweight titlist Shakur Stevenson taking on Jeremiah Nakathila for the vacant WBO interim junior lightweight title at the Virgin Hotels – the newly refurbished Hard Rock Hotel & Casino – in Las Vegas.

“We think it’s a really good fight,” Arum said to BoxingScene.com. “It’s a fight that (Top Rank vice president) Carl (Moretti) and the matchmakers (Brad ‘Abdul’ Goodman and Bruce Trampler) came up with. They are two fighters who will go at it.”

Initially, the co-feature of the Stevenson-Nakathila was slated to include red-hot super middleweight prospect Edgar Berlanga (17-0, 16 KOs), who dropped Demond Nicholson four times en route to a one-sided eight-round decision win in the co-feature of Saturday night’s Top Rank card in Kissimmee, Florida. However, with Berlanga’s girlfriend due to give birth to their baby close to the fight date and the show being moved from New York – where the popular ticket seller Berlanga is from – to Las Vegas due to the coronavirus pandemic the decision was made to have Berlanga return later in the summer or early fall.

That cleared the spot for Pedraza-Rodriguez, a fight that has been on Top Rank’s drawing board for the past couple of months.

The 31-year-old Pedraza (28-3, 13 KOs), of Puerto Rico, has won two fights in a row since a unanimous 10-round decision loss to junior welterweight contender Jose Zepeda in September 2019. Since then, Pedraza has won a pair of 10-round decisions against former junior welterweight world title challenger Mikkel LesPierre and 2008 U.S. Olympian Javier Molina.

Pedraza’s only other losses came when he lost his junior lightweight title by seventh-round knockout to Gervonta “Tank” Davis in January 2017 and when he lost his lightweight title by one-sided unanimous decision in a unification fight with Vasiliy Lomachenko in December 2018.

Rodriguez (21-0, 14 KOs), 26, of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, will be taking a significant step up in the level of his opposition by facing Pedraza.

Rodriguez has been active since coming back from a nearly two-year injury-induced layoff in 2017. Since returning in July 2019, Rodriguez has won five fights, four coming by knockout. Most recently, Rodriguez knocked out Jose Eduardo Lopez Rodriguez in the third round on the undercard of unified bantamweight world champion Naoya Inoue’s defense against Jason Moloney on Oct. 31 inside the bubble of the conference center at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Dan Rafael was ESPN.com's senior boxing writer for fifteen years, and covered the sport for five years at USA Today. He was the 2013 BWAA Nat Fleischer Award winner for excellence in boxing journalism.