Sunny Edwards believes that Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez has proven himself capable of “challenging” Naoya Inoue.
Rodriguez established himself as the world’s leading flyweight when in December he stopped Edwards to unify the IBF and WBO titles and to inflict Edwards’ first defeat.
The 28-year-old has since responded by defeating Adrian Curiel on the same promotion on which Rodriguez recorded his highest-profile victory by becoming the first to stop Juan Francisco Estrada.
After the second of Rodriguez’s recent victories he was widely praised as one of the world’s very finest fighters. He was also spoken of as a potential future opponent for the great Inoue.
Inoue defends his undisputed super-bantamweight title against TJ Doheny on September 3, but his status as so significant a favourite is a reflection of how few are considered capable of testing him.
At 24 Rodriguez is regardless expected to continue to move beyond the super-flyweight division in which he so recently defeated Estrada and in which Inoue, incidentally, once reigned.
Since encountering Rodriguez on the night of his finest performance, Edwards has an increased sense of admiration for him, and asked of the praise his one-time rival is being given he told BoxingScene: “I definitely think he’s one of the best fighters in the world – as I do myself. That’s why the fight was so good. Naoya Inoue is an absolute monster, but it’s a fight I’d love to see.
“When you’re dealing with this level of fighters, you’re dealing with a group of fighters rather than a one, two, three, four, five. When you have that much physical ability and understanding of a boxing ring – he has the chance to be one of the ones that challenges Naoya Inoue. Would I heavily favour him? Probably not. Inoue is one of the most phenomenal fighters there’s ever been.
“After my last fight, where I got a massive gash in my head, I ran to get stitches, put on my clothes, and come and sit ringside to try and support ‘Bam’, actually. I respect him massively for being able to do something that no one else has been able to do to me over 12 rounds.
“This sport is what I love; I love competing; I love fighting. The feeling I’m addicted to is that moment where I get caught with a shot and that adrenaline spikes all the way up. That’s the feeling I chase. I don’t chase fame. I don’t chase legacy, really. I don’t chase all the other things that other people really do it for. They’re all by-products of success, and I’m ready to receive them and go forward with that. However, the feeling I chase is that of getting involved in a fight, where it centres me so that the only thing that matters is that fight; that adrenaline spike I get.”
Edwards is on course to fight, in November in Birmingham, Galal Yafai, his leading domestic rival. He was also asked if losing for the first time had affected his confidence – Yafai, 31, that night defeated Rocco Santomauro on the undercard – and he said: “My experience was getting caught with a shot, a lead hand, and it breaking my face and doubling my vision, and it was blurry and it was moving and there was two of them. That’s my perception of what happened. I then stood there toe to toe, and went punch for punch.
“Maybe I was getting outworked; outscored; out-powered; out-everything. But I probably get more belief from the fact that I could barely see and barely see the range, and I’m standing there against one of the best in the division, and we were going blow for blow – and it weren’t the fight that got to me at the end in the ring, and the reason why the fight was stopped. It wasn’t even the knockdown. It was the cumulative damage that had been done to my face since the second round. My trainer [Grant Smith] wanted to stop it a round earlier; I wouldn’t let him. My, ‘Go and do something this round’, was about two-and-a-half minutes better than the last nine minutes, then getting hit with probably the biggest shot of my career.
“Now it was time, and I accepted Grant’s decision, and we live to fight another day. But at no point did I feel completely outmatched. At no point do I feel like we couldn’t go through all that again and I wouldn’t feel just as confident of winning. If anything, I feel like if my eye don’t go in the second round, I’m definitely gonna win. In my opinion I won three of the first four rounds on two of the scorecards. I feel like I was in a good state, even with the damaged face. It just became very, very, very hard to keep my focus mentally against someone physically and mentally so good in Bam, and I’ll give him all that props.
“I’ll keep chasing his tail, and he’s setting the pace right now at these weights, and that’s what I need. I need people in front of me to chase down; that motivate me; that make me up my game. I’m on it. My mind’s switched. If anything that loss has given me that, more than taken anything away from me.”
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