“People recognize his skill; that is why they don’t want to fight him. When you look at the last few opponents, he fought Silyagin; when he fought Silyagin, nobody wanted to fight Silyagin, a technical fighter from Russia that people don’t know, very good defensively. He got destroyed, literally. He couldn’t see with one eye at the end of the fight, he couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t hear.
“The prior fighter who fought him, [Vladimir] Shishkin, was very highly regarded, an up-and-comer who at one point people thought was going to clean up the division. He was certainly a very, very strong fighter, also very good defensively. He got literally destroyed during the fight with Iglesias. You only need to look at the images.
“Then you see the guy, [Evgeny] Shvedenko, who got a draw with Silyagin. He was knocked out in a very scary fashion, we were very, very worried about him. Every single guy that he has fought, he has destroyed. The people that are fighting him, they are never the same after that.”
Estephan believes Iglesias’ reputation will continue to grow if the knockout victories keep coming.
“We understand the hesitation for many of the top echelon fighters. I think that he is just going to continue doing that, and then the fans are going to recognize that this is the guy, the guy that is on the top of the hill.”
The comments come at an interesting time in the super middleweight division. Christian Mbilli currently holds the WBC title and is scheduled to face Canelo Alvarez in September, while Jaime Munguia and Hamzah Sheeraz recently picked up the WBA and WBO belts, respectively.
Iglesias (15-0, 14 KOs) claimed the vacant IBF title earlier this year and remains one of the division’s hardest punchers, though many fans believe his biggest test is still to come.