By Dan Ambrose: Shawn Porter says newly crowned interim WBC junior middleweight champion Sebastian ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora isn’t ready to challenge world champions Brian Castano or Jermell Charlo for their titles following his ninth-round stoppage win over
Despite 6’6″ Fundora (19-0-1, 13 KOs) throwing an incredible 705 punches in just nine rounds, former welterweight champion ‘Showtime’ Shawn Porter feels he’s not ready to take on the winner of the May 14th undisputed 154-lb champion between Charlo and Castano.
Porter says the 24-year-old Fundora needs to work on his outside game before he’s ready to challenge Castano or Charlo for their belts.
Nevertheless, the size, high work rate, and the crazy angles that Fundora throws punches from will cause both of those champions massive problems.
Last Saturday night, Fundora took a big step up in class in facing #1 WBC 154lb contender ‘The Hammer’ Lubin (24-2, 17 KOs) in a scheduled 12 round headliner on Showtime at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Going into the fight, many boxing fans thought Lubin would be too much for Fundora, as he had the power advantage and was seen as a future world champion.
“It’s hard to say it went I expected it to because I didn’t expect the fight to be stopped by the corner, but I had a feeling that the endurance, the work rate, and all that kind of stuff, I thought it would get the best of Lubin,” said Shawn Porter to Behind The Gloves in reacting to Erickson Lubin’s ninth-round stoppage loss to Sebastian Fundora last Saturday night.
Fundora got Lubin’s attention by knocking him down in the second round with a right-hand uppercut. Although Lubin did an excellent job of coming back in rounds three and four to land some nice shots, Fundora’s high volume punch attack was slowly doing a number on ‘The Hammer’ Erickson’s face.
In the seventh, Lubin unloaded on Fundora with a series of power punches to the head that led to him taking a knee. The round started with Fundora pounding the living daylights out of Lubin. It almost looked like it was heading for a 10-8 round due to the punishment the 6’6″ ‘Towering Inferno’ was dishing out.
That brief bit of success for Lubin was his last stand, as Fundora redoubled his efforts in the eighth, tagging his worn-out opponent at will with many shots. Lubin wasn’t ready for that kind of output from Fundora, and he wilted severely.
By the end of the round, Lubin’s face looked unrecognizable to the fighter that had started the contest. Fundora admitted that he knew that Lubin couldn’t last much longer with how badly swollen his face was at the end of the round.
“He’s not polished enough for those guys,” said Porter when asked how ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora will do against 154-lb champions Brian Castano and Jermell Charlo. “He’s got to keep working on his skills, and he has to develop a better boxing game from the outside.
“I’m not going to say he has nothing from the outside, but he has very little from the outside. I’m not saying he’s got to fight from the outside because he’s got long arms, but you can’t get up on everybody and bang out everybody.
“He brought his hammer. I brought my drill.”@SebastianFundo1 dug deep to pick up a big-time W 🧰#LubinFundora @JimGrayOfficial pic.twitter.com/txFoF9WLln
— SHOWTIME Boxing (@ShowtimeBoxing) April 10, 2022
“You [Fundora] got knocked down by Lubin and some other guys that know how to make you miss and come right back. He’s got to sharpen his skills,” said Porter.
In fairness to Fundora, he wasn’t knocked down by Lubin. He intentionally took a knee to get a break in the action because he’s been hit with several hard shots and wanted time to collect himself.
Jermell Charlo has already shown himself to be vulnerable to high-volume punchers in his first fight with Brian Castano last July.
Many boxing fans believe Castano deserved the victory, but the critical thing to remember is how Charlo struggled due to the output from the Argentinian higher.
“He brought his hammers today, but I decided to bring my drills,” said Fundora after his stoppage win over Erickson Lubin. “That’s what I did. My uppercuts were landing like no others. It got the job done. It’s my lucky punch. It lands pretty much against everybody.
“Once I find that, I feel like the jobs done,” said Fundora.
Fundora landed 255 of 705 punches for a 36% connect rate. For his part, Lubin connected on 149 of 368 shots for a 41% connect percentage.
Lubin will need to take an extended break to recover from the punishment he took in this fight. It’ll be interesting to see if Lubin can come back from this loss and his beating.
Even if Lubin hadn’t taken this kind of punishment, it would still be a tough fight to come back from. It took him five years to rebuild from his first-round knockout loss to Jermell in 2017, and he can’t be that slow in coming back from this loss to Fundora.
I don’t even want to begin to speculate how long it will take for the 26-year-old Lubin to come back from his defeat last Saturday to Fundora. It’s a much more devastating loss than Lubin’s defeat against Jermell because there was more of a beat down, and he lost to a non-champion.
If Lubin does choose to continue his career, he should think seriously about trimming off some weight and campaigning at 147. He lacks the punch resistance, size, and power to compete with the best at 154. If Lubin goes down to 147, he’ll have a better chance of being one of the major players in the weight class.