Ramon Cardenas willing to fight gym mate Murodjon Akhmadaliev – if the price is right

SAN ANTONIO — Ramon Cardenas’ path to a world title appears to have a friend-shaped obstacle in his path.

The San Antonio-based junior featherweight is rated second by the WBA at 122lbs, putting him within reach of a title opportunity. It’s an interesting position to be in, given that the undisputed champion Naoya Inoue brings a lot of money into the division. His status also means that his voluminous mandatory obligations open up the possibility for him to vacate one or more titles if he wants to rid himself of those obligations.

There’s only one boxer ahead of Cardenas in line for a shot at the WBA title. The only problem is, it happens to be his gym mate, the WBA interim champion Murodjon Akhmadaliev.

Both Cardenas, 25-1 (14 KOs), and Akhmadaliev, 13-1 (10 KOs), are trained by Joel Diaz at his training facility in Coachella, California. Akhmadaliev, who won that belt with a third-round stoppage of Ricardo Espinoza in December, is a former unified champion in the division and has been with Diaz since he turned pro back in 2018. 

Cardenas, 29, began training with Diaz in October 2023, splitting his time between the southern California town and his home in San Antonio, Texas.

Cardenas says the subject of a fight between the two came up in a conversation with Akhmadaliev’s co-manager Alik Frolov. That fight could potentially be ordered by the WBA if, for instance, Inoue vacated the WBA title and Akhmadaliev became full champion – and then the WBA ordered him to make a mandatory defense against the next available challenger, who would be Cardenas.

The two parties agreed that the fight could happen under the right circumstances – more specifically, a circumstance where both made a ton of money.

“Something had come up about us fighting and they said, ‘Ramon, if it’s for a million dollars we’ll do it’,” Cardenas told BoxingScene. “‘You can make a million dollars, MJ can make a million dollars, and then we’ll fight again and then we’ll all leave home happy. We’ll retire’. 

“His people are my people and my people are his people. It would have to be for something life-changing, it wouldn’t be for $100,000. I could fight someone else for $100,000.

The two have never sparred, as the two have yet to be at the same point in training camp when they work out together. Still, the fight would have to be worth their while to justify dividing the gym.

“If there’s a mandatory, you have to fight your mandatory,” said Cardenas. “If it’s for a million dollars then we have to fight. If not, I’d rather keep the friendship and stay with Joel Diaz.”

Cardenas first must handle the business in front of him. He will fight unbeaten Mexican fighter Bryan Acosta on Saturday at the Boeing Center at Tech Port in San Antonio in the ten-round main event of the ProBox TV card. 

While having the same trainer usually means a non-title fight is out of the question, there have been plenty of exceptions in title fights where camps had to be split up. A notable recent example is the 2018 fight between Daniel Jacobs and Sergiy Derevyanchenko, where the two boxers who shared the same training team split up their coaches to contest the vacant IBF middleweight title. Another notable example is the 1971 bout between Muhammad Ali and Jimmy Ellis, where their mutual trainer Angelo Dundee surprisingly cornered the lesser known Ellis, as he both managed and trained him, while he was only Ali’s trainer.

The ProBox TV chief executive Garry Jonas says he met with the WBA at their Houston office prior to traveling to San Antonio, and says that everyone is just waiting on the next move of Inoue. What he isn’t sure about is the $1million price tag per fighter.

“That number might have been a little steep but you never know,” Jonas said. “Things can always get worked out. So yeah, I think they’re realizing that they might have no choice but to do it.

“These things happen in boxing. Money makes things happen that you otherwise wouldn’t think could happen.”