The beauty of ‘Bam’: Boxing’s short king has become San Antonio’s other unlikely giant

Whenever Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs had his way with Chet Holmgren of the Oklahoma City Thunder last month, we were reminded of the difference a few inches can make, even among giants. We also marveled at how a man of 7-foot-5 can possess the touch and dexterity of a much smaller man while still doing the damage of a big one if allowed near the rim.

At times, in fact, it appears as though Wembanyama is almost impossible to block or stop, such are his physical gifts. When he exploits these gifts and opts to play tall, it often seems unfair. He makes it look easy. He makes big men look small. He proves that size really matters.

Advertisement

As a counter to that belief, you now have the New York Knicks, of course, as well as someone closer to home: San Antonio’s Jesse Rodriguez. At just 5-foot-4, Rodriguez stands two feet shorter than Wembanyama and is therefore a great deal harder to see and perhaps appreciate. He excels not on a basketball court but in a boxing ring, where size is less of a factor, and is usually, thanks to weight classes, battling opponents his physical equal. He is on occasion even the bigger man and is always, without exception, the better man, hence his current status as a pound-for-pound star.

This, in effect, means that Rodriguez has transcended his accomplishments in his specific weight classes — flyweight and super flyweight — and is now measured against boxers who compete in divisions his frame will never permit him to reach. On any pound-for-pound list, for example, Rodriguez might be seen rubbing shoulders with Oleksandr Usyk, the world heavyweight champion, or cruiserweight David Benavidez, or light heavyweight Dmitry Bivol. It is those kinds of men to whom Rodriguez, a two-weight world champion, is nowadays compared. It is those kinds of men he considers his rivals: Targets to chase, maybe surpass.

In terms of his own achievements, Rodriguez hardly falls short. On the contrary, he has, at the age of 26, already built a career worthy of a first-ballot Hall of Fame induction. Within just 23 professional fights, he has managed to lasso two weight divisions and shown in the process a desire to fight the best boxers in these divisions rather than take the path of least resistance. That mentality was what led to Rodriguez moving up in weight for a late-notice job against Carlos Cuadras in 2022, winning both a decision and the vacant WBC super flyweight title. It is also what led to Rodriguez pursuing Srisaket Sor Rungvisai that same year and stopping the heavy-handed southpaw from Thailand in eight rounds.

Advertisement

Those results, stunning for different reasons, would’ve been impressive at any age, but were made all the more impressive by virtue of Rodriguez producing them at just 22. He was, on the face of it, still only a prospect, yet demonstrated in the presence of both Cuadras and Sor Rungvisai the poise and maturity of a seasoned champion. Perhaps in the end it was no more than the temerity of youth that drove Rodriguez toward those fights so early in his career. Or perhaps, despite his cherubic features and the leash around his neck, he felt ready for it. Perhaps, when all is said and done, he is just that good.

The first time I had the pleasure of watching Rodriguez perform live was in September 2022. By then he had come into prominence scalping both Cuadras and Sor Rungvisai and was now on course to being named Fighter of the Year. He had so much momentum, in fact, that his third outing of 2022, against Israel Gonzalez, wound up as chief support to the trilogy fight between Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin in Las Vegas. It was, in other words, a bit of a showcase for Rodriguez; a chance for him to exhibit on a global stage the full breadth of his talent.

Advertisement

Watching him box that night, I was not as close to him as I would have liked, but that only made me pay greater attention. Had I the choice, I would have been a lot closer to the ring; close enough to see how well Rodriguez moved his feet; close enough to hear his breathing and his secrets. Yet alas, from a press box in the lower tier of the T-Mobile Arena, the feet and feints of Rodriguez were a little trickier to see. Instead of amplified, a small champion had, for me at least, been made smaller. One had to now squint, focus, concentrate.

It wasn’t ideal, no, but what each of us in the lower tier lacked in clarity we gained in perspective — the sort of perspective only possible with a degree of distance and detachment. We saw, from on high, how Rodriguez slipped effortlessly in and out of range with the calm but roguish intent of a pickpocket, one second asking for directions, the next making off with your watch. He didn’t move so much as shift, we noticed, bending always at the knees and at the waist. This allowed him to change levels, go up and then down, sometimes becoming even smaller when in punching range.

In such moments the gloves of Rodriguez seldom left the sides of his head — glued to his ears, it seemed — but their positioning never affected his ability to see. Whether they went around or between the gloves, his eyes would see everything, his opponent the prisoner, Rodriguez the panopticon. Each time Gonzalez would punch, for instance, Rodriguez would expect it, so would dip low, pull back, or slip to the side. He would then counter with right uppercuts, hooks to the body and left crosses from his southpaw stance, an ostinato of hands and feet impossible to disrupt. If ever Gonzalez tried, Rodriguez would simply entice him to go one way and then, like a matador, switch the angle, sweep his feet across the canvas, and stop just short of yelling “olé!”

It was beautiful stuff; as educational as it was entertaining. Rodriguez enjoyed it, we enjoyed it, and so too did Gonzalez, whose refusal to either admire or yield prevented Rodriguez from going through the motions or taking rounds off. His obstinance also gave us much more of Rodriguez. More sides to him. More layers to him. More questions asked of him. By the time it was all over, we had seen Rodriguez pushed in a way he had never been pushed before, yet were never more certain of his brilliance. We were just as certain that any position from which you get to watch arguably the sport’s finest technician is a privileged one.

Advertisement

Interestingly, at some point between Rodriguez exiting the ring and the main event starting, then-lightweight champion Teófimo Lopez visited us in the press box to shake some hands and make himself available for comment. On his travels Lopez elected to ask a few of us how we felt the fight between Álvarez and Golovkin would play out before giving his own opinion on the matter. The only thing he asked aside from that was whether we had seen and enjoyed Rodriguez in the chief support. “We had,” we said. “We did.” 

It was a question asked with all the conviction of the waitress who asks whether you enjoyed your meal as she clears the empty plates from your table. Lopez had no doubt seen us rub our bellies and therefore anticipated our approval. He then smiled having got it, as though he too had tasted and been nourished by the same meal. “So good,” I heard him say. “So good.”

Wanting more, after beating Israel Gonzalez at super flyweight in 2022, Rodriguez looked just as good the following year, when dropping back down to flyweight. There, at a weight of 112 pounds, he won the vacant WBO title with a decision over Cristian Gonzalez before stopping Britain’s Sunny Edwards in nine rounds to add the IBF belt to his collection. That Edwards win then sparked an impressive run of stoppages, which just so happened to coincide with Rodriguez returning to super flyweight. It is there he has cut down Juan Francisco Estrada, Pedro Guevara, Phumelele Cafu and Fernando Martínez in the space of just two years.

Advertisement

Now, as he moves up in weight yet again, this time to bantamweight (118 pounds), it is reasonable to suppose that, one, Rodriguez is hitting harder than ever, and two, his plans have never been bigger.

“A title defense wouldn’t have excited me as much as this fight does,” says Rodriguez, who will challenge WBA bantamweight champion Antonio Vargas (19-1-1, 11 KOs) on Saturday night. “Moving up to another weight division and trying to conquer another world title against a fighter like Antonio Vargas will push me that much more inside the gym and make me go out there and perform a lot better come fight night.”

To date, Rodriguez has done his best work at 115 pounds, roughly half of what Oleksandr Usyk weighed when defending his WBC heavyweight title against Rico Verhoeven last month in Egypt. But that isn’t to say Rodriguez is half the man of Usyk, of course. Far from it. We know by now that big things tend to come in small packages, and rarely is that truer than in boxing. It is for that reason we view fighters like Jesse Rodriguez the same way we might view a wedding ring, IKEA furniture, or Al Pacino. He is, in development terms, a tiny acorn, or a redwood seed with the genetic code to one day grow into a 300-foot-tall giant sequoia tree. He is an atom, physically invisible but when split capable of releasing explosive, cataclysmic amounts of nuclear energy. He is as short and direct as the three letters of his nickname suggest. He is, quite simply, “Bam.”

When not in the gym, “Bam” lives a small, humble life in San Antonio, Texas. A fan of a good latte, he can often be found hanging out at Eight Ball Coffee, his local coffee shop, and says that he even has plans to enter the coffee business once his fighting days are over. Catch him walking his dogs with his girlfriend, Rebecca, and their two children, Milo and Mila, and you might see the baggy T-shirt and pants and mistake him for an art student, tattooist, or indeed a barista. The last thing you would expect Rodriguez to do is box, much less be one of the top five pound-for-pound boxers in the world.

Advertisement

But if you watch – really watch – you will see it. You will see what makes Rodriguez so special and you will see why on Uncrowned’s latest pound-for-pound list he is beneath only Oleksandr Usyk, David Benavidez, Shakur Stevenson and Naoya Inoue, another short king repping the lower weights.

In fact, both Rodriguez, our No. 5, and Inoue, our No. 2, follow a tradition of diminutive world champions who seemingly have to do that little bit more to gain recognition, not only within their sport but on the street. Think, in that respect, of modern-day legends like Ricardo “El Finito” López, the minimumweight and light flyweight champion of the 1990s who only got his flowers at the finish line, or Mark “Too Sharp” Johnson, the three-weight world champion (flyweight, super flyweight and bantamweight) whose rise up the pound-for-pound ladder was no overnight thing. True as it is that these little men were revered by the purists, their genius in the ring was never commensurate with how much they were paid, watched or acknowledged.

That is why in many cases a champion in the lower weight classes will keep progressing through the divisions and stop only once they are physically outgunned. It is why Manny Pacquiao, a debutant at minimumweight (105 pounds), ventured as high as super welterweight (154 pounds) in his illustrious career. It is also why Rodriguez (23-0, 16 KOs) aims to capture a world title in a third weight class when he challenges Antonio Vargas in Glendale this weekend.

“Since ‘Bam’ got to the gym, we always envisioned him being a four- or five-division world champion,” says Robert Garcia Jr., Rodriguez’s conditioning coach. “This is just another step in that direction.”

Advertisement

Should Rodriguez win on Saturday, as most expect, he will immediately join the ranks of three-weight world champions in the sport, as well as further solidify his standing as one of today’s best pound-for-pound fighters. More than that, he will have edged ever closer to Naoya Inoue, his twin flame. “Inoue is a dream fight,” Rodriguez told me in 2024. “That’s a fight I have been asking about for a couple of years now. Every time they ask me to name my dream fight, I say it would be against him in Japan.”

It is plain to see why, too. For if the sport’s history tells us anything it is that boxers in the lower weight classes need rivals more than just about anyone. Find a rival — or, better yet, an equal — and there is suddenly the option for one boxer to stand on the shoulders of another to increase both their size and stature. Together they can grow — inches, legacies, wings. They can make themselves hard to overlook or look beyond, strengthened as they are by a common goal and a hyphen: Inoue-Rodriguez.

López had Rosendo Álvarez, albeit too late, while Johnson, too sharp for most, effectively went without during his various title reigns. Both those champions, although great, would have been considered even greater had they been blessed with a well-known equal capable of not only pushing them but providing the general public with a simpler translation of their achievements. (“Oh, he beat him. Yeah, I get it now.”) In absence of that, only the hardcore fans will likely understand the greatness of small men with subtle skills.

Which is why a fight like Inoue vs. Rodriguez is potentially huge for both. For Rodriguez, now a bantamweight, the opportunity to fight Inoue, the king at super bantamweight, connects him with the most commercially powerful boxer in the lower weight classes; someone whose last fight, against Junto Nakatani, attracted a crowd of 55,000 fans to the Tokyo Dome. For Inoue, meanwhile, much of the appeal of fighting Rodriguez is predicated on the Texan’s reputation as one of the pound-for-pound leaders, with only Nakatani, of all Inoue’s opponents, having anywhere near the same kind of cachet.

Advertisement

Given the stakes, it is no surprise to hear there is talk — according to Eddie Hearn, Rodriguez’s promoter — of Inoue-Rodriguez possibly landing on Netflix, boxing’s last cry for mainstream attention. And yet, even if the fight should go quietly into the night and land elsewhere, that won’t detract from its significance, nor its appeal. After all, Inoue and Rodriguez are about as good as it gets in the lower weight classes, and the thought of them sharing a ring is as tantalizing a proposition as boxing can deliver in 2026. They might lack the height and heft of their pound-for-pound peers, but it’s their skill and speed that truly sets them apart. If doubtful, just watch. In no time at all you will, between them, see the best jabs you could ever hope to see, thrown from both the orthodox (Inoue) and southpaw (Rodriguez) stance. You will see the best crosses, the best hooks, the best uppercuts. You will see the best body work, footwork and work rate. You will also see perfect form and technique, as though the sound of a bell has brought two diagrams to life.

You will, in short, see the best boxing has to offer.