Viktor Postol resisted as long as he could.
The former WBC super lightweight champion passed on a fight with Elvis Rodriguez several times because he knows the Dominican southpaw well and Rodriguez works with Postol’s former trainer, Freddie Roach. Once his already lengthy layoff extended beyond one year, though, Postol accepted a fight with Rodriguez that’ll take place Saturday night on the Frank Martin-Artem Harutyunyan undercard.
Showtime will broadcast Rodriguez-Postol as the co-feature of a tripleheader that’ll start at 10 p.m. EDT (7 p.m. PDT) from The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
“There was a bunch of fights offered to us,” Postol told BoxingScene.com through a translator. “We accepted all of them. We never wanted this fight to happen, but unfortunately nothing else was there. No one else accepted the fight.
“Eventually, it was just that there was no other fight possible and maybe we’ll have to wait who knows how long? And I just said, ‘Listen, I’m 40 years old. I have no place to go. This is boxing. We have to fight.’ ”
Postol, 39, will fight for the first time since his 10th-round, technical-knockout loss to Gary Antuanne Russell in February 2022, also at The Cosmopolitan. He has been able to train in his hometown of Brovary, Ukraine because his country’s military fended off Russian forces last year and pushed them toward the southern part of his homeland.
Postol knows a victory versus Rodriguez (14-1-1, 12 KOs) – who has been installed as more than a 4-1 favorite in their 10-round, 142-pound bout – would rejuvenate his career.
“That would just bring me to the better fights,” Postol said. “I know that he’s one of the top guys and if I beat him, that will open the doors for me for maybe a world title challenge again.”
Rodriguez, 27, has won three fights in a row since Kenneth Sims Jr. (20-2-1, 7 KOs) upset him by majority decision in their eight-rounder in May 2021 at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. Postol (31-4, 12 KOs) couldn’t be more familiar with his opponent, though, after numerous sparring sessions at Roach’s Wild Card Boxing Club in West Hollywood, California.
“We spent a lot of time together, more than a few training camps, sparred each other in more than a few training camps,” Postol said. “I helped him, he helped me, so we know each other very well. That will only make the fight more interesting. We know what we have to do to beat each other. And that’s gonna be the thing – who’s gonna do it better.”
Postol’s loss to Russell (16-0, 16 KOs) came in his only fight since he lost a 12-round majority decision to Jose Ramirez (28-1, 18 KOs), who retained his WBC and WBO 140-pound championships in August 2020 at MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas.
While Postol was clearly behind on the scorecards entering the 10th and final round versus Russell, he strongly disagreed with referee Mike Ortega’s decision to stop their fight with just 29 seconds remaining in it. Postol, who was on his feet and seemingly fit to continue, had not lost by knockout or technical knockout prior to the Russell fight.
“I don’t even wanna spend much time talking about it,” said Postol, whose previous three losses were 12-round decision defeats to Terence Crawford, Josh Taylor and Ramirez. “I wasn’t hurt. Nothing was happening in that fight. It shouldn’t have been stopped. Worst case, it could’ve been counted as a knockdown, give me 10 seconds or whatever, but there was nothing in that fight that I didn’t go through with Matthysse and all those other guys. They messed up my record with this stoppage and they just made him like he’s a KO artist or something.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.