As he surveys his list of champions, one in particular is special to World Boxing Council President Mauricio Sulaiman.
Unbeaten super-flyweight champion Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez “is a sensational, out-of-this-world phenomenon,” Sulaiman told BoxingScene hours after it was revealed at the weekly WBC news conference that Rodriguez will defend his belt Nov. 9 in Philadelphia against WBC interim champion Pedro Guevara of Mexico.
Guevara (42-4-1, 22 KOs) announced that he’ll meet the 24-year-old Rodriguez (20-0, 13 KOs) at the WBC event, with Ring Magazine reporting the news first on Tuesday.
Rodriguez trainer Robert Garcia confirmed that his fighter is already in the Riverside, Calif., gym for the bout.
After debuting as a light-flyweight and fighting at less than 110 pounds in late 2021, Rodriguez jumped at the chance to fight for the WBC super-flyweight title in early 2022, knocking down veteran former world champion Carlos Cuadras to win by decision, then moving on to score a sixth-round TKO four months later against another of the division’s best fighters, Srisaket Sor Rungvisai.
“If you look up the last decade of the super-flyweight division, it was like they had their own version of the ‘Four Kings,’ with Cuadras, Sor Rungvisai, (Juan Francisco) Estrada and (Roman ‘Chocolatito’) Gonzalez … ‘Bam’ has taken on three of them already and now he goes after another solid veteran in Guevara,” Sulaiman said. “It’s an unbelievable pace.”
Rodriguez went back down to flyweight to win and unify there against Cristian Gonzalez Hernandez and Sunny Edwards, and then, on June 29, he knocked out Estrada with a vicious seventh-round body punch.
Rodriguez prepared for Estrada by sparring with four-division champion Gonzalez in sessions that could’ve justified $1,000 ringside seats.
Fighting in Philadelphia seems an odd choice considering the interest Rodriguez had in fighting next either at home in San Antonio, back in Arizona or in Las Vegas.
A Matchroom Boxing fighter, Rodriguez’s all-action style is needed for a card expected to be headlined by unbeaten welterweight champion Jaron “Boots” Ennis in a highly criticized IBF mandatory title defense against Karen Chukhadzhian, whom Ennis defeated by three 120-108 scorecards in January 2023.
In Mexico’s Guevara, 35, Rodriguez meets a fighter coming off a May 12 split-decision triumph over Andrew Moloney in Perth, Australia, that caused Moloney to retire.
Estrada was empowered to invoke a rematch against Rodriguez, but instead opted to move up to the bantamweight division.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
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