FLOAT LIKE A BEE SPECIAL BREW
there is the broader pound-for-pound discussion in the boxing community. Crawford’s and Usyk’s achievements justifiably place them in the top two spots based on The Ring’s criteria. However, we’ve reached a point at which making the argument that the present version of Bam Rodriguez is the most skilled fighter on the planet would not be utterly dismissed. After Rodriguez’s win over Martinez, DAZN commentator Todd Grisham remarked that Rodriguez would be favored over Naoya Inoue. It was a bit of playful hyperbole from Grisham, but it served as something of a thought experiment. Oddsmakers would certainly favor Inoue, but how high of an ascent in weight and achievement is actually unfathomable for Rodriguez? Rodriguez has said in a number of interviews that his intention is to retire from the sport by the age of 30 to run a coffee shop. Provided we take him at his word, that’s less than five years remaining for him to grow as much as he’s going to grow and win as much as he’s going to win. That said, everything Rodriguez has achieved to this point in his career has come in a three-and- a-half-year time frame. His breakout win over Carlos Cuadras seems like a generation ago, especially considering Cuadras’ recent retirement, but it only came in 2022. Rodriguez was, of course, a late replacement in that fight, not a fighter on the radar of a major network whatsoever, and now he is one of the focal points of the entire sport. In that period of time alone, Rodriguez has compiled a resume at 115 – forgetting his dalliance at 112 to defeat that division’s trickiest fighter at the time, Sunny Edwards – that places him amid the greatest of all time in the division. As we went to press, it appeared as though Rodriguez was waiting on the winner of the imminent Willibaldo Garcia-Kenshiro Teraji IBF title fight to schedule a final unification bout. The winner would become the first undisputed 115-pound champion. Is it possible that Rodriguez is a win away from having an argument
for being on the junior bantamweight Mount Rushmore? For all intents and purposes, the history of the 115-pound weight class begins in 1980 with the WBC’s formal recognition of the division, when Rafael Orono became the inaugural champion in defeating Seung-Hoon Lee. Gustavo Ballas became the first WBA titleholder the following year, and in 1983, Ju-Do Chun cut the ribbon for the IBF. The WBO would join the party in 1989 as Jose Ruiz upset “Sugar Baby” Rojas to become its first champ. No conversation about the greatest 115-pound fighters of all time can be had without discussing Khaosai Galaxy, who is generally regarded as the best to ever grace the weight class. “The Thai Tyson” put together a run of dominance and longevity that would be hard to accomplish in the current landscape, making 19 defenses of his WBA world title. Galaxy scored 16 knockouts in those bouts, with only three men ever hearing the final bell against him in
a world title bout. That spot as the consensus junior bantamweight GOAT was achieved even without the dream bout between him and contemporary Jiro Watanabe ever materializing. Despite that, Watanabe could certainly never be accused of “ducking the smoke,” as half of his career took place in world title bouts, and the only fighter who beat him in his 14 title fights was Gilberto Roman – a man who also has an argument for placement in this mythical commemorative sculpture. Sung-Kil Moon would take the mantle from Galaxy and Watanabe as the dominant 115-pounder in the early ’90s before Johnny Tapia emerged and helped bring the division to the mainstream – or, more pertinently, the United States. “Mi Vida Loca” racked up 43 wins without a loss
The great Juan Francisco Estrada was stopped for the first time.
Defensive wizard Sunny Edwards proved easy to find for Bam.
But even the most casual of fans shown footage of Rodriguez in the ring could instantly identify that not only is he a fighter, but a special one. Few, if any fighters in the sport ace the eye test in the way Rodriguez does. If you had no understanding of boxing whatsoever, seeing his thudding knockouts would make his talent level apparent. But if you have even a passing familiarity with what boxing generally looks like, even seeing Rodriguez move in the ring would trigger receptors indicating “this isn’t normal.” Fighters tend to have a particular rhythm and bounce in their gait as they traverse the ring. When Rodriguez moves, it’s as if he’s floating, his feet always in position to punch. In fact, watching a Bam fight can often be like watching the annoyingly, effortlessly good kid at the skate park, gliding around performing normally difficult tricks with ease. Rodriguez turns the boxing ring into his halfpipe, a venue for him to perform the things his mind and body can imagine but others
cannot. On November 22, Rodriguez dug into his bag of tricks once again while demolishing Fernando “Puma” Martinez, defending his Ring Magazine junior bantamweight championship and adding another sanctioning body strap to his overflowing collection. There was hardly a second, let alone a round, in the 9½ frames of action where it was not abundantly clear that the No. 1 fighter in the division was leaps and bounds above the No. 2 fighter in the division. Take the closing sequence of the fight in the 10th round. Rodriguez had spent the better part of nine rounds hounding Martinez all over the ring, taming the normally relentless Puma and battering him with superior hand speed and power. Just as the action started to get redundant, Rodriguez decided to experiment and go on the defensive in search of the perfect knockout shot. He pedaled around the ring, hands at his side, and slipped six consecutive punches from a reigning world
champion before landing a perfect counter left hand that ended the fight. As you watch the slow-motion replay of the knockout, you can see Rodriguez smiling knowingly, as if he knew the feat he was about to perform but the audience didn’t yet. With Martinez flat on his back, Rodriguez stood defiantly over him, hands still at his side, a visual of sporting superiority as clear as any you’ll ever see. As high as Rodriguez’s Q-rating was coming into the Martinez fight, the nature of his dominance seemed to boost his standing in the eyes of the boxing public once again. At the time of this writing, Rodriguez sits at No. 4 in the pound-for-pound rankings, behind only Naoya Inoue, Oleksandr Usyk and Terence Crawford. But there are the pound-for-pound rankings, the ones this publication compiles, and
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