Ye Joon Kim’s last conqueror ‘had no clue’ about him

Rob Diezel is a name many fight fans are hearing a lot about this week, mostly because the junior featherweight holds a win over Ye Joon Kim.

Kim is a headliner as he fights Naoya Inoue on Friday at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan. The bout will stream on ESPN+.

Diezel, 37, has his own fight this week. He fights the 24-year-old Oregon native, Anthony Cruz Herrera, 2-0,  at the Armory in Salem, Oregon on Saturday. Diezel is coming off a loss in September, but before that fight, he had won a majority decision over Kim. The bout was Kim’s only fight in the United States. BoxingScene reached out to Diezel to see if he had any perspective on the fight. He was candid and honest.

“It was the last day of Ramadan when we fought so I spent 90 per cent of the fight thinking about what I was going to do for Eid Al Fitr,” Diezel said.

Diezel is the lifeblood of the club shows. A fighter who is willing to take hard fights against fighters with some achievements in their amateur or even professional career. Last-minute fights are something he is very used to. “As for my fight with Kim, it was a short-notice fight with a dude I had no clue about,” Diezel shared, 15-10 (4 KOs). Diezel took the bout knowing nothing about Kim and came away with a victory. A year-and-a-half later, Kim, 21-2-2 (13 KOs) is getting one of the biggest fights of his life as he is serving as a late-replacement for Sam Goodman, who had to withdraw from a fight with Inoue for the second time. The first fight was postponed, but now Inoue is keeping the January fight date which is Friday.  Inoue is facing South Korea’s Kim, a 32-year-old, who enters on a two-fight win streak after his loss to Diezel. Diezel had nothing, but kind words for the man he fought in the ring in April 2023.

“I wish Ye Joon Kim the best of luck with his fight,” Diezel said. “I’ll be rooting for him!”

Lucas Ketelle took an unconventional path to boxing, eventually finding his stride in gyms and media. For the past decade, he has hosted the “Lukie Boxing” podcast, filmed training camps for fighters like Arnold Barboza Jnr, Mikey Garcia and Caleb Plant, and worked with top professionals such as Mike Bazzel. Ketelle is also an author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for ProBox TV, BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @LukieBoxing.