Middleweight Brian Mendoza is boxing’s newest cinderella story fresh off his two-week notice fifth-round stoppage of former unified world champion, Jeison Rosario, last Saturday on Showtime.
“It was a golden opportunity,” said Brian Mendoza fresh off his upset victory of former unified world champion Jeison Rosario, on the Last Call Podcast. “I last fought March 26th of this year, and then after that fight I took two weeks off, and immediately after that I was back in the gym helping Erislandy Lara with sparring to get ready for his fight. So ever since then I was like ‘oh, maybe I will get a spot on [Lara’s] card, or early summer, there is supposed to be a lot of cards coming out, so we ended up just starting a camp.”
After the win, Rosario announced to the world that he was retiring from the sport of boxing, and Mendoza let it be known that he is willing to fight any challengers at either 154 lbs., or 160 lbs. Yet for the fighter with two losses to his ledger, this was no overnight success story.
“I knew after the last knockout I got on March 26th, I knew something would pop up,” said Mendoza as he kept motivated in the gym training day after day waiting on a life-changing phone call. “I knew something had to give since I gave them, the performance they wanted, the comeback they wanted, and I knew the opportunity would come. So I knew the preparation had to be there. I spent six-or-seven month preparing for an imaginary opponent, literally. When something did pop it was literally no hesitation it was ‘yes, please get me that opponent, now!”
Now Mendoza is one of the new bright faces of the sport.
“It was hard training for an imaginary opponent since there was no light at the end of the tunnel,”
Mendoza's relentless grind now has paid off as he is now a name in the sport of boxing and one of the feel-good stories of 2022.
