It could certainly be argued that the lower weight fighters of the sport are giving us the best entertainment right now. With little giants such as Naoya Inoue, Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, Junto Nakatani, Oscar Collazo and others giving us some great action fights, some fans are saying that the lower weights is where it’s currently at.
And, speaking of “Bam” and Nakatani, the Japanese fighter’s trainer Rudy Hernandez has made a pretty bold prediction as far as what would happen if his guy, the reigning WBC bantamweight champion, got it on with Rodriguez, the current WBC champ down a little lower at 115 pounds.
Rodriguez told The Ring that Nakatani would “beat Bam, 100 percent, within six to eight rounds.”
Pound-for-pound tension brewing between Bam and Nakatani
As fans know, Rodriguez, a pound-for-pound star like Nakatani, is unbeaten, this at 21-0(14), and some experts say he is either the best fighter in the world today or that he is right up there. The same could perhaps be said of the superb Nakatani, who is currently perfect at 30-0(23).
These two brilliant fighters, both of whom are southpaws, are each going into a unification fight next: “Bam” against Phumelela Cafu on July 19, and Nakatani against Ryosuke Nishida on June 8. Should both men emerge victorious, who knows, maybe they could fight one another. Nakatani is aiming for a massive, massive fight with Inoue, while “Bam,” although he has said he would love a fight with “The Monster,” concedes the fact that he and Inoue are too far apart in terms of size right now, and that they may be for some time.
Nakatani’s team isn’t pulling punches—Bam might have to answer
Perhaps “Bam” will bristle at what Hernandez has had to say about what Nakatani would do to him, and maybe Rodriguez will look to make the move to the 118 pound division pretty soon.
“I hope we fight Bam,” Rodriguez said in speaking with The Ring. “If you were Bam, would you be calling out Nakatani? Junto beats Bam, one hundred percent, within six to eight rounds. We’ll knock him out.”
Again, warrior “Bam” is certain to not like what he hears from Rodriguez here, and maybe a fight between the fighter from San Antonio and the fighter from Kanagawa in Japan will happen.
Who wins and how if these two pound-for-pounders do rumble?