Via Dan Ambrose: Shawn Porter says interim newly crowned young WBC middleweight champion Sebastian ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora is not yet ready to challenge world champions Brian Castano or Jermell Charlo for their titles following victory in his ninth inning first
Despite 6’6 Fundora (19-0-1, 13 KOs) delivering an incredible 705 punches in just nine rounds, former ‘Showtime’ welterweight champion Shawn Porter feels he’s not ready to fight. face off against the undisputed May 14 winner of the 154-lb championship between Charlo and Castano.
Porter says 24-year-old Fundora needs to practice her match outside before being ready to challenge Castano or Charlo for their title.
However, the size, high work rate, and frantic angles with which Fundora throws punches will pose big problems for both of those champions.
Last Saturday night, Fundora took a big step up in class when facing No. 1 WBC 154lb contender ‘The Hammer’ Lubin (24-2, 17 KOs) in a scheduled 12th round title match Showtime at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Entering the fight, many boxing fans thought that Lubin would be too much for Fundora, as he had the advantage in strength and was seen as a future world champion.
“It’s hard to say it happened, I was expecting it because I didn’t expect the fight to stop at the corner, but I have a feeling that endurance, work speed and all that. That, I think it’s going to get the best of Lubin,” Shawn Porter told Behind the gloves react to Erickson Lubin’s ninth injury-time loss to Sebastian Fundora last Saturday night.
Fundora caught Lubin’s attention by knocking him out in the second round with a right headbutt. Although Lubin excelled when he returned in the 3rd and 4th rounds to land some nice shots, Fundora’s high-volume punch was slowly damaging ‘The Hammer’ Erickson’s face.
In season seven, Lubin knocked Fundora down with a series of powerful punches to the head that brought him to his knees. The round started with Fundora smashing Lubin’s daylight. Looks like it’s headed for a 10-8 inning due to the penalty 6’6″ ‘Towering Inferno’ took.
That brief bit of success for Lubin was his final stand, as Fundora doubled his efforts in the round of 16, tagging his weary opponent at will with multiple hits. Lubin wasn’t ready for that kind of output from Fundora, and he was severely withered.
At the end of the round, Lubin’s face looked unrecognizable to the boxer who had started the competition. Fundora admitted that he knew Lubin couldn’t last much longer with how severely his face was swollen at the end of the round.
“He’s not polished enough for those guys,” Porter said when asked how ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora would play against 154-lb champions Brian Castano and Jermell Charlo. “He has to keep developing his skills, and he has to develop a better boxing game from the outside.
“I wouldn’t say he has nothing from the outside, but he has very little from the outside. I’m not saying he has to fight from the outside because he has long arms, but you can’t just get up and take everyone down.
“He brought his hammer. I brought my drill.”@SebastianFundo1 Dig deep to pick up a large W#LubinFundora @JimGrayOfficial pic.twitter.com/txFoF9WLln
– SHOWTIME Boxing (@ShowtimeBoxing) April 10, 2022
“Friend [Fundora] got knocked out by Lubin and some other guy who knows how to make you miss and come back in no time. He has to hone his skills,” said Porter.
To be fair to Fundora, he wasn’t knocked out by Lubin. He purposely knelt down to take a break because he had been hit by some tough shots and wanted time to regroup.
Jermell Charlo showed himself as vulnerable to bulk punchers in his first match against Brian Castano last July.
Many boxing fans believe Castano deserved the win, but it’s important to remember how Charlo struggled against higher yields from the Argentine.
Fundora said after the stoppage-time win over Erickson Lubin. “That’s what I did. The keys on mine landed like no others. It got the job done. That was my lucky punch. It goes against everyone pretty much.
“Once I realized that, I felt like the job was done,” says Fundora.
Fundora reached 255 in total 705 punches for a connection rate of 36%. For his part, Lubin connected on 149 of 368 images for a connection rate of 41%.
Lubin will need to take a long break to recover from the punishment he received in this fight. It will be interesting to see if Lubin can come back from this loss and his match.
Even if Lubin doesn’t take this punishment, it will still be an uphill fight to get back on. It’s taken him five years to rebuild from his first knockout loss to Jermell in 2017 and he couldn’t have been that slow in coming back from this loss to Fundora.
I don’t even want to start speculating how long it will take for 26-year-old Lubin to bounce back from last Saturday’s defeat to Fundora. It was a much more devastating loss than Lubin’s loss to Jermell because of more beats, and he lost to a non-champion.
If Lubin chooses to continue his career, he should think seriously about losing weight and getting active at 147. He lacks the punch tolerance, size and strength to compete with the best. at 154. If Lubin drops to 147, he’ll have a good chance of becoming one of the main players in the weight division.
