{"id":292775,"date":"2025-11-19T07:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T07:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/292775\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T07:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T07:34:09","slug":"bam-rodriguez-contends-cafu-not-estrada-gave-him-toughest-fight-of-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/292775\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Bam’ Rodriguez Contends Cafu, Not Estrada, Gave Him Toughest Fight Of Career"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juan Francisco Estrada dropped Jesse \u201cBam\u201d Rodriguez<\/a> in the sixth round of their fight 16 months ago.
Rodriguez recovered relatively quickly, but he was down on one scorecard (57-56) and even on another (56-56) when he knocked out the Mexican legend with a body shot in the seventh round. If you looked at Rodriguez\u2019s record and watched their fight for Estrada<\/a>\u2019s WBC junior bantamweight title in June 2024, Estrada seemingly gave The Ring 115-pound champion more trouble than any other opponent.
Rodriguez \u2013 who will face Fernando Martinez on Saturday night<\/a> in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia \u2013 has a different perspective on his eight-year, 25-fight professional career.
\u201cI\u2019d say Cafu was my toughest fight,\u201d Rodriguez told The Ring<\/a> regarding his 10th-round technical knockout of Phumelela Cafu on July 19. \u201cI think it looked easy on TV just because he wasn\u2019t throwing much. He was more on the defensive side, but just being inside the ring with him, he had power on his punches.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I wasn\u2019t aware of when he was gonna throw, just because he was being really defensive. So, I feel like that\u2019s what made it a difficult fight on my end. I had to be a little bit more cautious than usual.\u201d<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s Cafu connected with enough clean punches to cause a welt beneath Rodriguez\u2019s left eye in a fight Rodriguez entered as a 35-1 favorite. Rodriguez respected his then-unknown opponent\u2019s power early in their fight, when Cafu complicated it by occasionally catching Rodriguez with counters as the strong southpaw opened up in combination.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez\u2019s right hook staggered Cafu (11-1-3, 8 KOs) with about 1:15 to go in the 10th round. Cafu wasn\u2019t knocked down, but the former WBO junior bantamweight champ\u2019s trainer threw in the towel approximately 20 seconds later<\/a>.
San Antonio\u2019s Rodriguez (22-0, 15 KOs), ranked No. 6 on The Ring\u2019s pound-for-pound list, will attempt to add the WBA belt held by Argentina\u2019s Martinez (18-0, 9 KOs) to his Ring, WBC and WBO crowns on \u201cThe Ring IV: Night of the Champions<\/a>\u201d card at ANB Arena.<\/p>\n

Their 12-round, 115-pound title unification fight will be the second of four bouts DAZN Pay-Per-View will offer in the United States ($59.99) and the UK (\u00a324.99). DraftKings considers Rodriguez, 25, a 10-1 favorite to beat Martinez, 34, yet Rodriguez anticipates Martinez to be even more troublesome than Cafu.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s probably my toughest opponent to date, on paper,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to say it, but I\u2019ve never been inside the ring with him, so it\u2019s hard to tell, physically, what kind of opponent he will be. But on paper, I feel like he will be my toughest fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keith Idec is a senior writer and columnist for The Ring. He can be reached on X @idecboxing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Juan Francisco Estrada dropped Jesse \u201cBam\u201d Rodriguez in the sixth round of their fight 16 months ago.Rodriguez recovered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,1151,1144,1150,1149,1142,711,1145,1146,1147,1148,1143,49,48,1156,1155,1138,1136,1137,1153,1139,1135,1157,1152,82,1154,1134,1141,1140],"class_list":{"0":"post-292775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-community","10":"tag-boxing-fights","11":"tag-boxing-history","12":"tag-boxing-interviews","13":"tag-boxing-magazine","14":"tag-boxing-news","15":"tag-boxing-photos","16":"tag-boxing-rankings","17":"tag-boxing-results","18":"tag-boxing-schedule","19":"tag-boxing-videos","20":"tag-ca","21":"tag-canada","22":"tag-disqualification","23":"tag-draw","24":"tag-fight","25":"tag-fighter","26":"tag-fighter-news","27":"tag-knockout","28":"tag-latest-boxing-matches","29":"tag-ring","30":"tag-ring-magazine","31":"tag-split-decision","32":"tag-sports","33":"tag-technical-knockout","34":"tag-the-ring","35":"tag-top-fighters","36":"tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}