LAS VEGAS – Chordale Booker knows he is the underdog, but that doesn’t mean he is resigned to defeat against Sebastian Fundora.

He also knows he does not have the same name recognition as two-belt holder Fundora, but that does not mean he can’t fight.

Booker, from Stamford, Connecticut, is in Las Vegas on business and ready to show he belongs in the ring with the towering titlist.

“There’s no pressure there,” Booker said with a smile, having gone through the motions of a light pad routine at Wednesday’s public workout. “Everybody, I’m sure everybody here, thinks I’m going to lose. Everybody’s saying I’m going to get knocked out. Everybody’s saying things. I’m like, ‘Alright.’ Most people, you guys probably did your homework and watched videos of me, but a lot of fans, they only go by the popularity. If you got 100K followers, you nice. You got 20K followers, you a shit fighter. That’s just the world we live in now.”

Asked whether that was how he saw the Gervonta Davis-Lamont Roach Jnr fight ahead of time, Booker replied: “Absolutely. Boxers, we knew. We knew that [Roach] was good. But boxers, because we know who [Roach] is through boxing – amateur boxing, through the circuits – we know who people are. Boxing is a small community, even though it’s across the globe. We know who the guys are. Even in the UK or Africa, you hear about a guy, you know who they are.”

This fight, at the Mandalay Bay on Saturday, is Booker’s first with a full training camp behind him. He said he has also taken care of personal issues that have previously impaired him – without wanting to provide excuses – but admits Fundora has been in his sights since the tall southpaw won the WBC and WBO belts in a bloodbath against Tim Tszyu here in Las Vegas a year ago.

“Everybody who’s on the top [Booker has kept an eye on], but, yeah, he’s the guy with the belts. He has two of the belts. He controls half of the division. So absolutely, in my opinion, I think we have the best weight class as far as so many different guys who can win on any given night. We may not have the most popular guys, but we have the most competitive division. There’s too many guys [to single out]. I can name 10 guys right now who are all good … Vergil Ortiz, Sebastian Fundora, Charles Conwell, Xander Zayas – I can go on. There’s a lot of guys. I’m not that kind of guy. I don't pick fighters by popularity, I pick them by their skill. And those guys are skilled guys, and there’s a lot of skilled guys who we don’t know as well, too.”

A common theme forms in discussion with Booker: Just because a fighter might not yet have a signature win, a breakout victory, hit six digits on social media, failed a PED test, talked smack about an opponent or slapped him at a press conference, it doesn’t mean they can’t fight.

Booker is that guy: unassuming, ready to make his mark and quietly confident. 

But he knows that, with Fundora, he has an unusual style problem in that the 6ft 6ins, 154lbs is also a southpaw who can use his dimensions if needed but who is renowned for his volume and getting involved in firefights.

“I don't think anybody can actually be prepared for him until you get in the ring, you start to do a couple rounds and you kind of get a gauge for how tall and how long his arms are,” admits Booker, who is also a southpaw but one who comes in at a mere 5ft 9ins.

“But I’ve had sparring partners who came in who were his height, who were taller, who were shorter, fought similar to his style,” the challenger went on. “Of course, they couldn’t beat him, or else they’d be where he is if they were him. But I think I’m going to be just fine with the height.”

Ultimately, however, Booker, 23-1 (11 KOs), is not sure what to expect on fight night, so he has prepared for everything. Fundora is known to abandon tactics that would suit his metrics and proportions, and he has a penchant for getting into wars.

“Some people would just enjoy fighting because that's just their style,” Booker said.

“They’re better at that. I don’t know how he trains. I'm not in his camp. You don’t hear too much about him, so I don’t know. I don’t know why he does that. In the Tim Tszyu fight, he was boxing.”

That’s true, but Tszyu was blinded by a horrendous cut on his scalp from the early going in the contest, and Fundora was best served keeping away from Tszyu’s increasingly desperate swings rather than giving Tszyu his best shot at a win and surrendering his advantages.

“I don’t know what he's going to come out with, but I’m prepared for either one,” Booker continued.

Is he able to avoid a war?

“I don't know if you can, honestly,” he added. “I don't know if you can. Being elusive, having good feet, good head movement. … But I don't know. [Fundora] covers a lot of distance, so I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to win. That’s my only job. I don’t care if I got to go forward, go back, move around, bang, whatever. I’m doing whatever to win the fight.”

Booker has practiced punching higher targets “non-stop” in camp, ever since he got the call to learn who he was fighting. He has been punching up ever since. But there is no doubt in his mind that he wins. He just needed the opportunity and the platform.

“I know a lot of people are counting me out,” he said again. “I’m the big underdog. But that’s why we do the fights, right? That’s why people are going to tune in, too, because they want to see me lose. And there’s a lot of people who want to see me win, too.”

Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, is on The Ring ratings panel and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.