Is Light Heavyweight Glory Looming for Old-School Edwin Rodriguez?

Edwin Rodriguez ran to the ropes, arms raised to the air in a fit of jubilation. He had just sent his opponent down to the canvas with a wicked right uppercut just 48 seconds into the first round. This was going to be a short night. Why not start the celebration early?

But Michael Seals rose, and when Rodriguez went in for the kill, he paid the price. That’s what a fighter does. He goes for the finish when it’s there, and he sometimes finds out that he might be the one finished.

Boxing is rough. 

Seals wasn’t just some guy off the street. Undefeated, and unwilling to have that mantle taken away from him so easily, Seals began warding off the overly aggressive Rodriguez with jabs, crosses and parries.

Boom!

Rodriguez never saw the punch coming. A short right hand launched La Bomba down to the canvas for the first time in his career. The brave 30-year-old from the Dominican Republic rose before he was counted out.

Bam!

Rodriguez found himself down on the canvas yet again. At least that’s what he’s told happened. It’s all still a bit hazy.

“I don’t remember anything after that!” Rodriguez told Bleacher Report. “I underestimated him a little bit—well, a lot, actually.”

Rodriguez fought the rest of the fight on instinct and muscle memory. Ultimately, he won via Round 3 knockout in one of the best fights of 2015.

Lesson learned. Rodriguez said he wouldn’t underestimate any of his opponents ever again. Still, that minor slip-up might also prove quite beneficial to him going forward. Since a 2013 decision loss to Andre Ward, Rodriguez believes he’s been seen as too dangerous a fight for other top 175-pounders who’d rather take on easier opponents who don’t have losses yet.

There are two schools of thought in boxing.

The first is rather new. It says once a fighter loses a fight, he’s pretty much done for as a top-flight boxer. The ramifications of such a thing are easy to see. Fighters avoid risk like the plague, and instead of testing themselves to their limits, they focus, instead, on maintaining the illusion of being unbeatable.

The greatest fighter who ever lived, Ray Robinson, ended up with 19 losses on his record, and even at his peak, Robinson lost a decision to bruising middleweight Jake LaMotta. 

No one is unbeatable, and it only takes a willing heart to find out just who out there in the world is good enough or big enough or fast enough or all of that combined to find out.

That’s old school.

Fighters knew this as recently as the early 2000s. When I talked to Shane Mosley last summer for a look back at his 2000 superfight against Oscar De La Hoya, the thing that stuck out most to me was Mosley’s dismay for the current state of boxing.

No, it wasn’t that there weren’t great fighters in the era. Rather, it was that so few of them were willing to take risks the way Mosley, De La Hoya and others long before him would.

To his credit, Rodriguez is a throwback fighter, too. When he was offered a 2013 bout against then lineal super middleweight champion Andre Ward, a fighter many considered at the time (and possibly still) to be the best boxer on the planet, Rodriguez jumped at the opportunity.

There is nothing to lose for a fighter who isn’t afraid of losing. Well—there shouldn’t be. That's the old-school way.

Harry How/Getty Images

Ward was too slick for Rodriguez, but he said he learned more from that one fight than all of his wins combined.

Still, Rodriguez is ready for big game. He's racked up wins against fighters he considers quality opposition since the Ward fight, meaning you might never have heard of some of them, but those guys could fight. But he's ready for more.  

“When am I going to get the big fights?” asked Rodriguez. “The big fighters? Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev? There are so many big names at 175. Lucian Bute just went back down to 168, but that’s another big fight there.”

It must be frustrating being a fighter in today’s world. Let’s face it, when the highest-paid athlete on the planet fails to make a bout against the one other fighter everyone in the world wants to see for six long years, the message it gives other fighters is to steer clear of guys like Rodriguez.

“Everybody always picks a fighter to follow, and then when they get one loss, they throw them out like nothing. That’s why a lot of fighters these days do what they do. You can’t complain about a guy not fighting big fights, because as soon as somebody gets one loss or something...look at my case. I lost to Andre Ward by decision. He never dropped me or nothing. But after that fight, I don’t get the big fights. I don’t get the big names, because I’m the not a lot of reward but a big-risk fight.”

Maybe that’s changing now. Since his slugfest against Seals last year, Rodriguez said he’s starting to hear the phone ring a little more. But why now?

“I think it’s just one of those situations where I got a little careless, and now people all of a sudden have gotten brave and want to fight me.”

Thomas Williams Jr. will be the brave one on Saturday. If you were to talk to him this week before the fight, you might here a similar story as Rodriguez. Both men appear as though they are on the verge of a world title opportunity against lineal champion Stevenson, and both probably believe a win against the other is just the ticket to get there.

For his part, Rodriguez believes he’s right on the cusp of some big things. And don’t worry—he doesn’t plan on underestimating his opponents anymore either.

“At least he’s got some sort of name. He’s been on TV a few times. I know he’s hungry. I’m hungry. And I want that world title fight.”

Rodriguez will face Williams Jr. during Saturday's PBC on Fox prime-time tripleheader (8 p.m. ET) at StubHub Center in Carson, California. The main event of the card is Victor Ortiz vs. Andre Berto 2. 

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.