By Brian Webber: Sebastian ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora (20-0-1, 13 KOs) called out the undisputed junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo last Saturday night after successfully defending his interim WBC 154-lb title against Carlos Ocampo (34-2, 22 KOs) at the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.
The scores were 117-111, 118-110, and 119-109.
The towering 6’6″ Fundora said at the post-fight press conference that he wants the winner of Charlo vs. Tim Tszyu next. Those two are expected to fight in January.
Fundora’s victory over Ocampo wasn’t what boxing fans expected from hm, as he threw a lot of jabs and chose not to fight on the inside for long durations as he normally does.
Indeed, many fans booed during the championship rounds for lack of action in the fight. Fundora’s jab wasn’t particularly powerful from the outside, and he was fortunate that the judges scored the fight the way they did.
Ocampo was frequently landing the more eye-catching shots, but his problem was that he using the inside of his gloves. That took away some of his power.
Fundora will need to go back to his normal style of slugging on the inside for him to have a shot at beating the Charlo vs. Tsyu winner because his jab is too weak for him to win rounds against those guys. He generates no power on his jab, and he stands no chance of defeating Charlo or Tszyu if he stays on the outside against them.
“We are the WBC mandatory, but the winner of Charlo two or any of the top ten. I’ll take any of them,” said Sebastian Fundora at the post-fight press conference last Saturday night when asked who does he want next.
“I have Charlo winning, but I wouldn’t be surprised if [Tim] Tszyu wins,” said Fundora when asked who wins the Jermell Charlo vs. Tim Tszyu fight whenever the contest happens.
“He’s [Tszyu] is a strong pressure fighter, and I think Charlo will have a hard time with that, but Charlo is a hard hitter, so that’ll definitely be the difference. I think he [Charlo] can [knock him out].
“I feel like whatever,” Fundora said about whether he’d fight the Charlo vs. Tszyu winner on the inside or the outside. “With this fight, I usually go inside to fight inside. I felt like whenever I wanted to go inside, I went inside. Whenever I wanted to box outside, I boxed outside.
“Now, it’s not what the opponent wants to do; it’s what I want to do. So we’ll see how I feel that day,” said Fundora.
“I figured with this fight, he was going to be a tough guy because of all the crap everyone was talking about the ‘first round knockout [loss to Errol Spence Jr,'” said Fundora about Ocampo.
“With that, I figured that he was going to come with a big heart, bigger than anyone that I ever fought, because he had something to prove. We just worked with that. We knew he was going to be a tough guy.
“He obviously learned from that fight with Spence. Those 12 straight wins [for Ocampo], it meant something,” said Fundora.