![]() “When am I going to get the big fights?” asked Rodriguez. There is nothing to lose for a fighter who isn’t afraid of losing. When he was offered a 2013 bout against then lineal super middleweight champion Andre Ward, a fighter many considered at the time (and possibly still) to be the best boxer on the planet, Rodriguez jumped at the opportunity. To his credit, Rodriguez is a throwback fighter, too. Rather, it was that so few of them were willing to take risks the way Mosley, De La Hoya and others long before him would. No, it wasn’t that there weren’t great fighters in the era. When I talked to Shane Mosley last summer for a look back at his 2000 superfight against Oscar De La Hoya, the thing that stuck out most to me was Mosley’s dismay for the current state of boxing. No one is unbeatable, and it only takes a willing heart to find out just who out there in the world is good enough or big enough or fast enough or all of that combined to find out.įighters knew this as recently as the early 2000s. The greatest fighter who ever lived, Ray Robinson, ended up with 19 losses on his record, and even at his peak, Robinson lost a decision to bruising middleweight Jake LaMotta. Fighters avoid risk like the plague, and instead of testing themselves to their limits, they focus, instead, on maintaining the illusion of being unbeatable. The ramifications of such a thing are easy to see. It says once a fighter loses a fight, he’s pretty much done for as a top-flight boxer. There are two schools of thought in boxing. Since a 2013 decision loss to Andre Ward, Rodriguez believes he’s been seen as too dangerous a fight for other top 175-pounders who’d rather take on easier opponents who don’t have losses yet. Still, that minor slip-up might also prove quite beneficial to him going forward. Rodriguez said he wouldn’t underestimate any of his opponents ever again. Ultimately, he won via Round 3 knockout in one of the best fights of 2015. Rodriguez fought the rest of the fight on instinct and muscle memory. “I underestimated him a little bit-well, a lot, actually.” “I don’t remember anything after that!” Rodriguez told Bleacher Report. Rodriguez found himself down on the canvas yet again. The brave 30-year-old from the Dominican Republic rose before he was counted out. A short right hand launched La Bomba down to the canvas for the first time in his career. ![]()
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