Sebastian Fundora is a freak, all right … a freakin‘ wrecking machine.
The 6-foot-6 junior middleweight dished out frightful punishment against favored Erickson Lubin until Lubin’s trainer had seen enough and stopped the Fight of the Year candidate after Round 9 Saturday in Las Vegas.
And Fundora (19-0-1, 13 KOs) survived a harrowing seventh-round knockdown, which only made his performance more remarkable.
Fundora won the WBC “interim” belt, making him the mandatory challenger for the sanctioning body’s 154-pound title. That means he’s among the leading candidates to face the winner of the Jermall Charlo-Brian Castano fight for the undisputed championship.
“I want to go after all of them,” he said. “This is the interim belt. I want the world championship title. I want the real deal.”
He looked like the real deal in the ring, applying so much pressure on Lubin that he couldn’t follow trainer Kevin Cunningham’s instructions to spin away when he was trapped.
Lubin (24-2, 17 KOs) had a great deal of success even under those daunting circumstances. He couldn’t match Fundora’s punch rate – 706-368 in punches thrown, according to CompuBox – but he landed the cleaner, more-eye-catching punches in a number of rounds.
Lubin simply couldn’t do enough to keep Fundora off of him and avoid the taller fighter’s punishing blows, including one head-jolting uppercut after another.
Fundora put Lubin down with a right uppercut in the final seconds of a wild, back-and-forth Round 2, when it became clear that those watching were in for a treat. Lubin survived but Fundora had left no doubt that he was a formidable threat.
The back-and-forth battle continued for the next several rounds. Then came one of the craziest rounds you’ll ever see, Round 7, during which Fundora delivered a horrible beating that produced a grotesque knot between Lubin’s glassy eyes.
It appeared Lubin might not survive this time. Then, out of nowhere, he hurt Fundora with a right hand and followed with a flurry that forced Fundora to take a knee.
“I intentionally took a knee,” he said. “I knew if I kept taking shots like that it wouldn’t be smart for me. I wouldn’t have been able to collect myself.”
That he did. It was all Fundora after that. He outworked Lubin in Round 8 and pounded him in Round 9, as Lubin, for the first time, failed to fire back with any consistency. That’s probably why Cunningham stopped the fight.
Fundora was asked whether the trainer was wise to save his fighter from more punishment.
“I think so,” he said. “… His face shifted from Round 1 to 9, it completely morphed. There was a lot of blood coming out. He’s a tough fighter, he was in the game the whole time. There was no need to get hurt that much.”
Just like that, a fighter who has been as much a curiosity as anything else because of his height brutally broke down and knocked out one of the most-talented and hottest fighters in the business.
Indeed, if one doubted whether Fundora was a legitimate title contender going into the fight, that isn’t possible now.
