Sports
Sebastian Fundora keeps his title with one second left
Fundora stopped Ermal Hadribeaj at 2:59 of the 12th round in Las Vegas, his fourth WBC super welterweight defense, and called for undisputed.
Twelve rounds is 36 minutes of boxing. Sebastian Fundora needed almost every second of it.
Fundora stopped Ermal Hadribeaj with a left hand at 2:59 of the 12th and final round on Saturday, Oct. 17, at The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, retaining his WBC super welterweight title, the Associated Press reported. One more second and the fight would have gone to the scorecards.
“It was dramatic to knock him out at the last second,” Fundora said afterward, according to the AP. That’s one way to put it.
The fight
It was Fundora’s fourth successful defense of the title, and Hadribeaj’s first professional loss, the AP reported. Fundora improved to 25-1-1 with 17 knockouts. Hadribeaj, an Albanian fighter based in Miami, fell to 23-1-1, according to the AP and Fightmag’s live results.
Hadribeaj came in as the WBC’s mandatory challenger and attacked the body early, the AP reported. He was also penalized for holding, losing a point in the third round and another in the 11th, according to the AP and Fightmag. Two deducted points matter in a close fight, and this one was heading to the judges until the final second.
No scorecards were released for the main event, because it ended in a stoppage. So we don’t know who was winning. That’s part of what made the ending so sharp: a fight with no official verdict, settled by a single punch with a second left on the clock.
“I kept landing body shots and was looking for that special shot to get him out of there,” Fundora said, according to the AP. He found it.
The tallest man in the room
Fundora, 28, is a 6-foot-5 southpaw from Coachella, California, the AP reported. That’s unusually tall for the 154-pound division, and it means opponents have to deal with punches arriving from angles they rarely see. Fundora weighed 152.8 pounds and Hadribeaj 152.4 at the weigh-in, according to Fightmag.
His career has had one hard reset. Brian Mendoza knocked him out in April 2023, the AP noted. Since then, Fundora has won five straight. He took the WBC and WBO titles from Tim Tszyu in March 2024, then stopped Chordale Booker, Tszyu again and Keith Thurman in successive defenses, according to the AP.
That’s a run of comebacks, rematches and big names that has turned a fighter once defined by his height into one of the division’s most dangerous champions.
The undisputed question
“I want to go for undisputed in this division,” Fundora said, naming Jaron Ennis and Josh Kelly as possible opponents, according to the AP.
Undisputed means holding every major belt in a weight class at once. In boxing, that’s as much a business problem as a fighting one. The titles are split among sanctioning bodies, promoters and broadcasters, and getting the right fighters into the same ring depends on money and politics as much as willingness.
Saturday’s card aired on DAZN and TNT as a Premier Boxing Champions event, according to the PBC and Fightmag. A drawing card helps make the big fights happen. A last-second knockout is the kind of clip that gets shared, and that kind of attention is useful when you’re asking for bigger purses.
The rest of the card
In the co-main event, Armando Resendiz beat Koen Mazoudier by unanimous decision over 10 rounds at super middleweight, with scores of 98-92, 97-93 and 97-93, the AP reported. “This was the kind of fight that I expected,” Resendiz said.
Marco Romero stopped Matias Ferreira with a right hand at 1:54 of the first round, and Jaime Osuna won a majority decision over Cristian Cangelosi, according to the AP.
A scheduled bout between Brandon Figueroa and Tomoki Kameda didn’t happen. Fightmag reported that Figueroa missed weight and fell ill overnight.
From the cheap seats
For fans, the ending is the story. Most fights that go 12 rounds end with an announcer reading numbers off cards, and half the crowd thinking the judges got it wrong. This one ended with a man on the canvas and a referee waving it off as the bell was about to ring.
For Hadribeaj, it’s a cruel way to lose an unbeaten record: 35 minutes and 59 seconds of work, gone in a moment. He’ll have a case for a rematch, or at least for another title shot, once the sting fades.
For Fundora, it’s a reminder of what a champion’s job really is. Not just to win, but to win in a way that makes the next fight worth paying for. One second, it turns out, can do that.
Sources
- News4JAX (Associated Press): Fundora stops Hadribeaj in final second
- Fightmag: Fundora vs. Hadribeaj live results
- Premier Boxing Champions: Sebastian Fundora vs. Ermal Hadribeaj
- Bleacher Report: Fundora’s last-second KO of Hadribeaj
