By Ben Jacobs
Edwin Rodriguez did not spend too long in the ring last year, but he was content with two stoppage victories, both of which were crowd-pleasers. In particular, his shoot-out with Michael Seals last November in which he tasted the canvas for the first time, showed his determination to bounce back and stop a previously unbeaten opponent.
“I feel like I had a good year,” Edwin told BoxingScene.com.
“I had a tough fight in my last outing but I think a tough fight like that opens up some opportunities. I showed a lot of heart but at the same down I went down, so some fighters are going to think they have a chance now.”
Among many boxing news outlets, the tremendous clash between Mexico’s Francisco Vargas and Japan’s Takashi Miura was voted the 2015 Fight of the Year. Rodríguez concedes it was a worthy winner.
“Vargas had a pretty good fight as well, I enjoyed it so I had no problems with that winning. Having a fight of the year type candidate is good, just don’t have too many of those! It was good to do it at least one time.
“I would have liked to have had three fights, hopefully this year I will get three or four in.”
After campaigning much of the time at super middleweight, Rodríguez stepped up fully to light heavyweight in 2014 and has recently demonstrated increased punching power, something which he agreed with and attributed to not cutting weight.
“I’m able to bring all my strength into the fight now, before I was dehydrating myself. Before at 168lbs I felt strong in the gym but those last couple of weeks I was taking so much out that I had a hard time, but now I feel like I’m able to keep my speed and show power so 175lbs is where I belong.
“There’s a lot of exciting fights at 175lbs and I’m willing to get them made. I would like to fight Adonis Stevenson but also there are good fighters like [Andrzej] Fonfara who doesn’t have a title but has a big fan base and is a big name at 175lbs. Chávez Jr, I’d love to get made, so many guys, up and coming prospects and I’m excited to be at a weight where there could be a lot of entertaining match-ups.
The Dominican Republic-born fighter also gave his opinion on the forthcoming rematch between Sergey Kovalev and Jean Pascal.
“Pascal is a guy that can surprise you,” he opined.
“I don’t see him winning a twelve round decision against Kovalev but Pascal is aggressive and fights in spots, he could land a big shot and put Kovalev away. I think he has the power and aggressiveness to get it done. I still think Kovalev has the advantage but I don’t write Pascal off.”
While Edwin is hoping to secure a second world title shot in 2016, his first attempt at world honours came against one of the consensus best fighters in the world in the form of Andre Ward back in November, 2013. ‘La Bomba’ suffered the first defeat of his professional career and admitted that Ward was simply too good on the night.
“Andre Ward is a very smart fighter - it was very frustrating fighting him. I wanted to fight him and mix it in but he was too smart to fall into that kind of fight. He was either too far out or too close in. He didn’t allow me to get space to let my hands go and get that little distance where I’d be able to punch.
“You can’t take anything away from him, he’s a very smart fighter and difficult to figure out.
“He has the style to beat guys like Kovalev and [Gennady] Golovkin. The thing with Ward is, once you cut off the ring, he knows how to fight well on the inside, he knows how to punch you and tie you up and make it look like you’re the one tying him up. He knows how to get his head involved and let you run into his head, he’s very tricky. I think he will be able to not allow their power to make the difference. I don’t think they would be able to catch him with one shot at a time.”
