Brian Mendoza’s Knockout of Sebastian Fundora Looks Like a Fluke Now

It is wild to think about that night in April 2023, especially seeing where the chips have fallen now.

Back then, it looked like Brian Mendoza had fundamentally altered the trajectory of the 154-pound division by turning “The Towering Inferno” Sebastian Fundora into a highlight-reel casualty.

Fast forward to Saturday, March 28, 2026, and the script has flipped in a way that feels like a glitch in the boxing matrix.  After getting “timber’d” by Mendoza, Fundora evolved. His 2025 was a masterclass in proving critics wrong. He handled Chordale Booker with ease, but the real statement was the July 2025 rematch with Tim Tszyu.

Unlike their first bloody encounter, Fundora dominated the rematch, dropping Tszyu in the first and forcing a retirement by the seventh. He enters Saturday not just as the WBC champion, but as a -380 favorite against a veteran name like Keith Thurman.

Mendoza is a classic one-hit wonder. That three-punch combo against Fundora was supposed to be his ticket to the elite, but the follow-through never materialized. The losses to Tim Tszyu and Serhii Bohachuk relegated him back to the “tough out” category. Now, he’s a +245 underdog against Yoenis Tellez, a dangerous Cuban prospect, fighting on the undercard of the very man he once nearly put into retirement.

In 2023, Mendoza pulled off a miracle upset, but today, he’s the gatekeeper again.

The most fascinating part of this “time traveler” scenario is the Tim Tszyu factor. He’s the common thread who beat Mendoza convincingly but couldn’t solve the 2025 version of Fundora. It suggests that Fundora used that knockout loss as a hard reset, whereas Mendoza hasn’t been able to find that lightning in a bottle a second time.

Even the way we watch them has changed. Showtime Boxing is a memory, and the “Prime Video” era is the new reality. It’s a reminder that in this sport, the ground moves under your feet as fast as the fighters do.

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