So Do His Management
Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez is a sensational talent. How do we know? We can see. How else might we know? Eddie Hearn was telling us.
The Boxing Of Boxing relies on the Business Of Boxing; if you want a career, money and attention, you’ll need it. It’s well known that managers and promoters bring on their boxers by matching them with opponents who are appropriate to their style and talent level.
That’s sometimes where the fabled ‘journeymen’ come in, a murky world where some boxers are hired to not win. Even if they have good skills. Apparently.
Bam has not been involved in that, of course, but look at his record and you’ll not notice massively well-known names on there, except his last but one opponent, Sunny Edwards and last one, the champ Estrada.
It’s beautifully done and in a social media era when even fools are held up as seers, hasn’t fallen to the ‘you know who he should fight…’ nonsense. In a time when protecting and carefully plotting your fighter’s career is a lost art, Rodriguez has been very well served.
And now he’s WBC Super Flyweight Champ, in, according to ESPN, ‘…a candidate for fight of the year’
The Fight
This was beautifully set up too. Juan Estrada, the more seasoned champ, Rodriguez the younger coming man. That was the Business Of Boxing.
The Boxing Of Boxing was stupendous. Estrada needed to be close to be effective; give him a phone box fight and he would have made an international call, but Rodriguez didn’t let him.
Credit; Sporting News
Bam kept him at distance, making it hard for him and still landing. As early as the 2nd round, Rodriguez was using the angles so well that Estrada couldn’t tell where those punches were coming from. He was even able to hurt Estrada in the next stanza with an uppercut, that could only have happened by standing straight in front of him, that’s how confident the challenger was.
The champ made an attempt to make the fight rougher though, he got closer in round 4, but even then he found himself on his back for the first time in his career, an uppercut scrambling him and a straight right putting him down. It seemed entirely Bam’s fight.
Until the 6th, when an Estrada heavy jab put Bam down. He got straight up and it was probably a momentary loss of concentration, but Estrada looked perkier.Next round though, he was trying to keep Rodriguez away and although they were both at it, the champ suddenly winced from a body shot and very soon after, a sick left to the body put him completely down and out. ‘The 24-year-old phenom loaded up on a vicious left hand to the liver for a seventh-round knockout of Juan Francisco Estrada to become the new WBC and Ring Magazine super flyweight world champion Saturday night at the Footprint Center in Phoenix, Arizona, and live on DAZN, as they told us.
Rodriguez Resplendent
This was how it was supposed to be. Bam was brought here so well and then it was up to him – he delivered beautifully.
USA Today summed it up very well; ‘Gallo showed glimpses of his masterful self, but they were few and far between. The younger “Bam” Rodriguez lived up to his name…’
has the Business Of Boxing and the Boxing Of Boxing in perfect harmony.
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