Sebastian Fundora will target the winner of the junior middleweight championship clash between Jermell Charlo and Tim Tszyu if he is victorious against Brian Mendoza in California on Saturday.
“I will try to be impressive [against Mendoza] like I always do, but after this fight, my promoter Sampson [Lewkowicz] and I will request the WBC to make me the mandatory to fight the winner of that fight,” "The Towering Inferno” told ProBoxTV News. “No matter how I win, I want that fight next.”
The undefeated Fundora (20-0-1, 13 KOs) is not taking Mendoza lightly, but at the same time he is clearly confident of having his hand raised in victory at the Dignity Health Sports Park.
“He’s a good fighter with decent power, but he’s too slow to beat me,” he says of Mendoza, who sports a record of 21-2 (15 KOs) and is coming off a one-punch knockout of former unified champion Jeison Rosario. “And he can be hurt. And he eats a lot of uppercuts, which against me is … not good. I’ll make him an uppercut sandwich to eat.”
It will be Fundora’s second consecutive outing at the outdoor arena; last October, he outpointed Carlos Ocampo in a contest that lacked the drama of his previous outing, in which he came off the deck to stop Erickson Lubin, but which Fundora argues was a quality win.
“Ocampo was a better fighter than they gave him credit for,” he said. “He was knocked out by [Errol] Spence when he was very green. Carlos Ocampo came to fight, and I did well getting the victory against him. He was a tough opponent. Watch him against other fighters now and you’ll see.”
Aside from headlining at one of boxing’s most celebrated venues, the Ocampo win was memorable for Fundora in that he was able to share the card with his sister Gabriela, who outpointed Naomi Arellano Reyes in a ten round flyweight contest. Now 10-0 (4 KOs), Gabriela will be on big brother’s undercard again on Saturday.
“It was a beautiful thing to make history with my sister on the card,” he said. “I’m so proud to be able to have that in my life. Family is everything.”
Over the past few years, much of the previous generation of top 154-pound talent – contenders and titlists like Tony Harrison, Julian Williams, Rosario, and Lubin – has peaked and begun to decline, leaving Charlo and Tszyu as the last men standing. But just beneath them, Fundora is at the vanguard of a crop of young contenders including Israil Madrimov, Magomed Kurbanov, Charles Conwell, and Jesus Ramos that seems poised to launch a collective assault on the championship sooner rather than later. Fundora, however, insists that he is focused only on himself, and the men ranked above him.
“I am only studying Tszyu and Charlo,” he said. “They are my focus until my focus becomes someone else. I don’t worry about what other fighters are doing until they’re in my way.”
