There was never a point where Emmanuel Rodriguez questioned the process.

A knockout loss to Naoya Inoue ended his IBF bantamweight title reign, though there wasn’t any shame in the defeat that May 2019 night or especially in the aftermath.

Then came the pandemic. Then the controversial defeat to Reymart Gaballo after losing out on the chance to face Nonito Donaire and Luis Nery long before him. Another eight months went by before Rodriguez’ interim WBA title fight versus Gary Antonio Russell ended in a headbutt after just 16 seconds.

“It seemed like every f----- up thing that could happen to me, happened,” Rodriguez quipped to BoxingScene.com. “I spent three years without a win. So many things happened. The fight with Luis Nery that got canceled, the fight with Gaballo that ended the way it did. Then the Russell fight ending in a headbutt after just a few seconds.

“But you know what? It made me more determined to win this title. I survived the roughest part of my career and can finally see the finish line.”

Through it all, Rodriguez (21-2, 13KOs) managed a two-fight win streak and the chance to regain his old IBF title. The 31-year-old Boricua will face Melvin Lopez, a Nicaraguan based out of Miami, in their vacant title fight this Saturday from MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

The Showtime headliner marks his first full title fight since the loss to Inoue (25-0, 21KOs), which ended his year-long title reign. Inoue went on to fully unify the division before he abdicated the throne in January to compete at junior featherweight where he has claimed the WBC/WBO titles.

All four belts were made available, though—true to Rodriguez’s brand of luck in recent years—his bout versus Lopez (29-1, 19KOs) is the last vacancy to be filled. Takuma Inoue, Naoya’s younger brother, claimed the WBA belt in April to fill the first void.

Jason Moloney—whom Rodriguez defeated in their October 2018 title fight between unbeaten bantamweights—won the WBO belt in May after Top Rank pulled him from the WBC path. He beat the Philippines’ Vincent Astrolabio, who passed on the chance to face Rodriguez to instead contend for the WBO belt.

Rodriguez-Lopez was previously targeted to take place in July but was held back to first allow Donaire’s scheduled WBC title fight versus Tijuana’s Alexandro Santiago.

All told, Rodriguez will have been out of the ring for ten months once the bell rings for Saturday’s main event. His last bout came in a one-sided, technical decision win over Russell in their rematch last October 15 in Brooklyn, New York. Their bout ended at the start of round ten, once again due to a clash of heads but this time with enough rounds banked in their IBF title eliminator.

All that mattered to the former titlist was that his hand would get raised and that his next fight would with the chance to become a two-time IBF bantamweight titlist.

“I appreciate the road I had to travel to get to my second world title,” admitted Rodriguez. “I don’t really worry about how any of the fighters got their title shots. I’m proud of what I had to survive to get here.”

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox