Life will never be again the same for Ramon Cardenas, following his spirited fight-of-the-year effort against Naoya Inoue. 

The courageous Texan, who lives in San Antonio, dropped the Japanese superstar in round two of a thriller in Las Vegas before succumbing to the electric fists of one of the best fighters in the world.

Still, the stock of the 26-2 (14 KOs) Cardenas rose dramatically, and ahead of a vacation to Japan and some time to heal and recover, the 29 year old was still a little disappointed that he didn’t pull off 2025’s biggest upset.

“I mean, it’s good,” he told BoxingScene of what life was like 48 hours on. “Granted, I’m bummed out that I lost, but I’m not down and out about it. My spirits are high. I’ve just gotta keep working, man.” 

He will not, however, be going back to work as a Lyft driver – a position he gave up in 2023 to focus on boxing. It’s proved to be a shrewd move, but the likeable and polite Cardenas also remains proud of having worked in that role previously.
On Monday morning, he wrote on X: “How about this Lyft driver now?” 

He followed that up with: “Never be ashamed of making an honest living. I no longer do Lyft but I’ll never be embarrassed about it. Also I need that Lyft sponsorship.”

He finished that job in July of 2023.

“At the time, I was struggling financially; making out,” he explained. “But I signed with my manager, and I told him, ‘Hey, man, I need help financially, like to pay my rent, more than anything’. It wasn’t, like, I’m buying dumb stuff and going around just flexing money that I don’t have. It was more just paying rent.”

His manager Mike Miller answered his call for help, his rent was paid, and Cardenas then defeated the 15-0 Panamanian Rafael Pedroza, not stopping to look back. 

“Everything kind of just changed after Pedroza – you know what I mean?” he said. “I had some money in my pocket and I was able to financially take care of myself.”

He certainly showed he could take care of himself against Inoue at the T-Mobile Arena.

Had the bell not gone almost immediately after Inoue rose from that wonderful flashbulb left hook, who knows how different the trajectory of Cardenas’ life would have become? 

And with the bell in mind, Cardenas admits it is hard to know how close to victory he actually might have been.

“You know, ultimately, I was two seconds away,” he smiled. “Because if he [referee Thomas Taylor] would have counted nine and 10, then the conversation would have been different right now, but... I think it’s all God’s timing. God has the ultimate say-so when it comes to stuff like that, so I was really close, but at the same time, I was far.”

Cardenas’ left hook was not an isolated incident. He stood with Inoue through numerous portions of the fight and was able to express himself without the burden of expectation upon him. Life as the underdog means you are written off, yes, but it also means that as long as you do your best, you are in a position to over-deliver.

“I didn’t have no pressure on me, because I was relatively unknown,” Cardenas said. “Nobody knew who I was, so it was one of those things where I just had to go out there and do my best. I didn’t have no pressure on me. All the pressure was on him. So I just went out there and showed out.”

There were some within the trade urging fight fans not to sleep on Cardenas, but even those who knew what the Texan could do were blinded by what Inoue had done. Like Lamont Roach did earlier in the year, Cardenas shocked plenty of observers by being a far livelier B-side than anyone expected, and he is firmly of the school of thought that fame and a significant social media presence do not make a great fighter. 

“I’ve been saying that recently, if you go back to all my interviews – I’ve been saying that people recently have been thinking that boxing is a popularity contest,” Cardenas said. “And they think that, ‘Oh, you have a million followers on Instagram, you’re really good’, or, you know, any of that stuff. 

“And that’s not the situation. I know fighters who have 200,000 followers on Instagram, and they’re not as good. They’re 10 and two, 10 and three, and they’re not really all that great. And no disrespect to them, but a lot of the times that’s not the situation, in certain cases. I had 5,000 followers, but it doesn’t take away the fact that I was ranked number one in the WBA, and ranked top 10 in the other two organizations. I’ve been preaching a lot that boxing is not a popularity contest. It’s about the best fighters fighting the best, and just because you might not know a certain person doesn’t mean that they’re not any good.”
When Inoue did finally get on top of Cardenas, seven rounds had gone by, and by the time the referee stepped in to halt the fight, opinion was split over whether it happened at the right time. Cardenas complained to Taylor, but said: “I wasn’t necessarily upset with it in general. Like I told everybody the day of the fight, the ref saw something that I didn’t. I’m okay with it, you know what I mean? I’m not going to be upset about what the ref does because ultimately, yes, his job is to protect the fighter, and I had told myself and I had told my team prior to the fight that I was going to go out and I was going to go out on my shield. No matter where the cards lay, I was ready for that, and I guess the ref saw something and he decided to stop the fight.” 

Inoue, for his part, improved to 30-0 (27 KOs) with the win. He has not gone the distance since his fight-of-the-year contender with Nonito Donaire in 2019.

“He’s pound for pound for a reason,” Cardenas added. “What he did really well was… like his timing, and I had said it before – his timing and his explosiveness was really good. He did that really well. That’s what he did really good, and that’s something that I expected.”

What so few expected was the volume and power of leather that went back towards the Japanese fighter from Cardenas’ gloves. As well as the knockdown shot, Inoue took some clean left hooks and was on the end of some terrifically hard right hands. But Cardenas knew Inoue could take a shot.

“Was I surprised?” he explained. “Not necessarily, because it’s like I use it for myself in my own example. My last fight [against Bryan Acosta], he did not punch nowhere near as hard as Inoue. He was not in the level of nowhere near close to Inoue, and he dropped me. So I got dropped by a guy who punches nowhere near as hard as Inoue, and it was just one of those shots where you land it good and if you land a good shot on anybody, they’re going to go down. So for me, with my shot, it was a shot that we had been practicing. And I was able to catch him [Inoue] good and he went down. But, I mean, shit, he does take a good shot, I’ll tell you that.”

The Inoue fight has served as a springboard for Cardenas’ future. Yes, he will go to Japan on pleasure, but already he has been courted by promoters there for future fights. He is a man in demand, and said with real modesty and some disbelief: “Yeah, I’m actually very popular now.”

Sacrifices have been made to get there. Not only did he have to walk through the fire against Inoue, not only did he give up his job to back himself as a boxer, but before his ring walk on Sunday night in Las Vegas he had to cut off his ponytail because the commission had concerns that it might whip either he or Inoue in the eye.
“I don’t want the hair swinging around,” said Taylor in the dressing room.

“Hey, man, just cut it,” Cardenas told his team.

“Any little distraction that I could avoid, I wanted to avoid, so I ended up cutting it before the fight. But it was coming off no matter what, so I’m not sad about it. 

“It’s a new chapter in my life, brother.”