OFTEN what makes a fighter special rather than simply good is the way in which they win fights. A good fighter, you see, will win fights and consider that to be enough, whereas a special fighter will not only win fights but win them in a manner that suggests they are not content with a win unless their opponent has been thoroughly beaten, vanquished, that is, by way of stoppage or surrender.
In the case of Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, he very much falls into the latter camp. This should become even more impressive, too, when you take into account Rodriguez is a super-flyweight standing at just five feet four and weighing 115 pounds. And yet, despite these so-called limitations, Rodriguez doesn’t just win fights, he ends them. He doesn’t just beat world-class opponents; he beats them like they have never been beaten before.
This was true again overnight when Rodriguez, still only 24, stopped modern great Juan Francisco Estrada in the seventh round, taking the Mexican’s WBC super-flyweight belt in the process. As always, a win of any variety would have sufficed for Estrada, yet, as is the Texan’s custom, he was determined to ensure this wasn’t just any old win. Indeed, just as he had done to Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (whom he stopped in eight rounds in 2022) and Sunny Edwards (whom he stopped in nine in 2023), Rodriguez wanted to defeat Estrada in a way few were predicting; in a way that would, on his part, require maximum risk yet deliver in the end maximum reward.
This he did, too. He set about Estrada, a natural back-footer, with an aggression and intensity indicative of a man hungry for a stoppage and had, as early as round four, managed to drop the champion for the first time in the fight.
A thing of beauty really, Rodriguez had ventured forward behind a right jab, followed this with a left uppercut, which caught Estrada, and then proceeded to pop out an additional right jab and left cross, the last punch doing all the damage. As a result of it, Estrada fell back to the canvas, shocked no doubt by both the variety of his opponent’s attack and also the venom contained in his shots. Already, having been stunned and put down, he knew he could be hurt. What is more, only Carlos Cuadras (twice in 2020) and Juan Carlos Sanchez (twice in separate fights in 2011) had succeeded in putting Estrada down previously.
With him hurt and dropped relatively early, it would have been easy to refer to Estrada’s age (34) and remind yourself that he is a decade Rodriguez’s senior. This would be no big deal if the two of them were competing anywhere above, say, welterweight, but it usually goes that fighters in the lower weight classes are deemed finished, or close to it, once they get anywhere near their mid-thirties. Whether that’s true of Estrada, 44-4 (28), is not for me to say, but he certainly won’t have been helped by a recent period of inactivity – Estrada didn’t fight at all in 2023 – and, even if busy and full of momentum, the last fighter you want to be facing at 34 is someone like Rodriguez, this whirling dervish full of both boyish enthusiasm and serial-killer spite.
That said, nobody was questioning Estrada’s experience or cleverness. They didn’t question it beforehand and they didn’t question it in round six when Estrada used both to lure Rodriguez into a trap and repay the favour, dropping the champion with a stiff right hand. In many ways, Estrada had used Rodriguez’s enthusiasm against him in this moment. He let him come forward, he waited for him to become flat-footed and square on, and then he exploded with a sudden double-jab, right-hand combination which stung Rodriguez, caught him unawares, and resulted in him tumbling to the canvas.
Embarrassed more than hurt, Rodriguez sprung to his feet no sooner than he had been taken off them and did so with a rueful smile. It was, if anything, a reminder; a reminder that no matter how dominant he may become in the fight there was always danger lurking around every corner. He was embarrassed to find himself touching the canvas, no doubt, but with this embarrassment came a grudging respect and also a gratitude. After all, having been put down Rodriguez had no option but to refocus and raise his game to even higher levels. Not only that, with it now being 1-1 in knockdowns, he had even greater incentive to drop Estrada again and secure the kind of win he sought from the very outset.
A lot can be conveyed in a smile and the smile of Jesse Rodriguez, now 20-0 (13), is no different than any other in that respect. The smile on his face following the knockdown in round six, for example, revealed a lot about his state of mind, while the one in round seven, produced after finishing Estrada with a vicious left hand to the body, was one of pure contentment; the smile of a man who knew his work here is done. That it could be seen on his face as Estrada remained writhing around in pain on the canvas made it all the more powerful and chilling. To end a fight like that strolling about the ring grinning ear to ear reveals only how special “Bam” truly is.
