Jesse "Bam" Rodriguez patiently slipped punches and flashed a devilish smile before he unleashed a straight left hand from hell to knock out Fernando Martinez on Saturday night.
With the 10th-round stoppage win, Rodriguez (23-0, 16 KOs)
added another 115-pound belt to his collection, picking up Martinez's WBA title in the process. Rodriguez came into the clash as part of “The Ring IV: Night of the Champions” in Saudi Arabia already carrying The Ring, WBC, and WBO crowns, and now he’ll have his sights set on snatching the IBF title for undisputed champion status before moving on to the bantamweight division.
“It was a tough fight. I knew Martinez was going to be a tough opponent. He was a lot tougher than I expected,” Rodriguez told reporters. “I hit him with everything, and he made it to the 10th round, but I was able to go out there and get the job done. Thankfully, that last shot ended the fight.”
Rodriguez, a masterful southpaw, outclassed and outlanded Martinez 276-131 while throwing 717 punches, nearly 200 more, according to CompuBox.
“There is a lot more that you all haven't seen,” said Rodriguez,
The Ring’s No. 6 pound-for-pound fighter. “I just go out there and have fun. There are a lot of sparring sessions in the gym that I feel are a lot better than I did against Martinez.”
After comfortably crushing The Ring’s No. 2-ranked contender in the wee hours of the morning on the week he welcomed his son, who was born in Texas, Rodriguez will wait and see how the bout between IBF champion
Willibaldo Garcia and
Kenshiro Teraji unfolds on December 27 so that he can take on the winner.
“Now, after this victory, I should be No. 4 pound-for-pound,” said Rodriguez, a free agent
. “I have Terence Crawford, Oleksandr Usyk, Naoya Inoue and then myself. I had Dmitry Bivol at No. 4 before, but I feel like this kind of performance I had versus Martinez should put me at No. 4.”
If Rodriguez cleans out the 115-pound division after facing the winner of Garcia-Teraji, a 118-pound run should be next, followed by perhaps much talked much-talked-about clashes against undisputed 122-pound king Inoue and even Junto Nakatani soon after.
“He is a phenomenal talent at just 25,” Martinez’s promoter Eddie Hearn said on DAZN’s broadcast Saturday. “He’s getting better and better and better with every performance. He beat the No. 2 guy in Martinez without even coming out of second gear. He constantly tried to get him out of there even when he was winning so comfortably. He kept taking chances, trying to get the stoppage.
"He didn’t mind taking a few to try and force the knockout. He slipped punches and delivered a showreel knockout. He has one more belt to go to get undisputed. Then he’ll go to bantamweight, and maybe the
Naoya Inoue fight by the end of 2026.”
Manouk Akopyan is The Ring’s lead writer. Follow him on X and Instagram: @ManoukAkopyan