By Elliot Worsell 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 maxi.