FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Ramon Cardenas is ready to push on for another shot at the big names in the junior featherweight division.
The 122lbs contender was competing last night at the War Memorial Auditorium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in his first contest since defeat to Naoya Inoue in May. Although Cardenas was stopped in that contest, he came out with his head held high and his stock rose having had the undisputed champion down and badly hurt in the second. Cardenas was given the tough task of Erik Robles Ayala on his return, but excelled with a brutal fifth round finish of the Mexican.
“The fight was just a patient fight. I knew I could catch him, I could hurt him, but we were just staying patient,” Cardenas told BoxingScene. “You know what I'm saying? Working on the game plan. It was basically catch and shoot. My coach installed that in my head, ‘catch and shoot, catch and shoot.’ So I think that's what we did. A lot of times I tell people when you knock somebody down, a lot of times it happens so fast that you just go through muscle memory. But, really, it was just my coaches worked a lot on catch and shoot, and I think that's what we did.”
The bout, which was broadcast on ProBox TV, also marked Cardenas’ first under experienced trainer Manny Robles.
“I knew I belonged at the top, in the top echelon of [junior featherweight], which I’m proving it,” Cardenas said. “Going out and proving it with a guy like [Erik] Robles. He is, I believe, a former IBO world champion. So it was just proving it, and that's really all it was, you know. I know my manager was a little timid about me going with Manny Robles, but I knew from the first day that I was there, everything was locked in so well. And, I mean, again, it showed in the ring.”
Cardenas has also been sparring former unified bantamweight champion Junto Nakatani ahead of his 122lb debut next week in Saudi Arabia.
“It was good, at first I was on the fence about it because it was like, we could fight,” Cardenas said of the rounds shared, “but my trainer said something that makes a lot of sense. Who better to spar with than somebody like that?”
The two Japanese stars, Inoue and Nakatani, are undoubtedly the two stars of the junior featherweight division at present, and after sharing the ring with both, would Cardenas be happy to face either?
“Yeah, of course. I've fought Inoue already,” he said. “Again, he's the echelon, top echelon fighter of the division. I already fought him. So it's like I said in interviews, I got nothing else. I already fought the main guy, you know, who else? I’ll fight anybody. That's why on the back of my jacket, I had ‘fearless’ on it. At the end of the day, we're fighters. We're fighters for a reason. I would never go and say, ‘Oh, no, he's going to beat me.’ I would never do that. That's why I have this on my shorts [reveals Japanese symbols on his cup]. It's ‘fearless’ in Japanese, because I don't fear nobody.”
