Kevin Cunningham had never seen anything like Erickson Lubin’s temporarily disfigured face in a boxing ring.

The respected trainer therefore felt he had little choice but to stop Lubin’s “Fight of the Year” candidate with Sebastian Fundora once the remarkably brave Lubin returned to his corner following the ninth round in April 2022. Lubin could barely see out of right eye due to the severe swelling beneath it, there was obvious damage done to the junior middleweight contender’s nose and he bled from his mouth.

“I didn’t know how severe the damage was,” Cunningham told BoxingScene.com. “I just knew it looked worse than any fighter that I’ve ever worked with. No fighter I’ve ever worked with took that kind of facial damage, had that kind of damage done to their face during a fight.”

The resilient Lubin luckily suffered only a hairline fracture to his nose and a dislocated right shoulder during a brutal bout in which he floored Fundora during the seventh round.

“His face swelled up, but there was no real damage there,” Cunningham said. “There was no internal bleeding or anything. He had a fractured nose. That was pretty much it. And he had a dislocated shoulder, so that was pretty much the gist of the damage. It looked worse than what it really was.”

The 27-year-old Lubin recalled in his own interview with BoxingScene.com that he was comforted during his trip that night to a hospital in Las Vegas once he learned that he didn’t suffer any career-threatening damage to his face. The southpaw from Orlando, Florida stayed out of the gym for a couple months, but he started sparring again late last summer and has stayed in the gym to remain ready for his return to the ring.

Lubin (24-2, 17 KOs) will fight for the first time Saturday night in the 14 months since Fundora defeated him in their fight for the WBC interim super welterweight title at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. He is scheduled to battle Luis Arias (20-3-1, 9 KOs) in a 10-round, 157-pound bout that Showtime will broadcast as part of the Carlos Adames-Julian Williams undercard from The Armory in Minneapolis (9 p.m. EDT; 6 p.m. PDT).

Cunningham, meanwhile, has no regrets whatsoever about stopping Lubin’s spectacular slugfest with Fundora before the 10th round began. Lubin was ahead on two scorecards (85-84, 85-84, 85-85) through nine rounds, but Cunningham couldn’t condone Lubin taking even one more punch to his grotesquely swollen face.

“He dropped Fundora in the seventh round,” Cunningham said, “but Fundora came right back out and won the eighth. And then in the ninth, I saw Fundora was still hitting him with those shots and it was like Erickson couldn’t get out the way of the punches. So, I just said, you know, ‘That’s enough. His face is almost recognizable and I’m not gonna sit here and watch him take any more punishment like that.’ ”

Several of Lubin’s supporters seated ringside threw ice into the ring and vehemently objected to Cunningham’s decision to stop the bout. More than a year later, Cunningham cannot comprehend how anyone who genuinely cares about Lubin could’ve wanted that fight to continue.

“I was really disappointed in some of the so-called close people to him that were disappointed that I stopped the fight,” Cunningham said. “That said a lot about who they really were in my book. The way I seen it, he’s young, you can live to fight another day. But I’ve been in this game long enough to where I’ve seen a fighter take too much punishment and he was never the same after that. But thankfully that’s not the case with ‘Hammer’ because he’s looking spectacular in the gym. He’s sparring with some real tough, rugged, solid sparring partners. I think he’s gonna look spectacular on Saturday night.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.