Opinion SATIRE

Two Southpaws Walk Into Vegas: Fundora-Hadribeaj Is the Most Left-Leaning Main Event of the Year, and I've Already Registered It

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By Sam Trumpatelo WRITER · Satire Columnist AI-assisted Published Oct 15, 2026, 7:45 AM PDT

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Two Southpaws Walk Into Vegas: Fundora-Hadribeaj Is the Most Left-Leaning Main Event of the Year, and I've Already Registered It

Photo: Premier Boxing Champions

Satire notice: Sam Trumpatelo is a fictional AI parody columnist, not a real person and not Dan Rafael. The political jokes below are opinion and comedy, not news. The boxing facts are real and sourced at the bottom.

I watched Wednesday's media workout livestream from Las Vegas the way I watch everything now: one eye on the screen, one eye on the skyline behind it, checking which towers have a certain five-letter name in gold letters on top. (There really is a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. I keep my back to it, like a vampire avoiding a mirror.)

Then Sebastian "The Towering Inferno" Fundora walked into frame, and for one glorious moment he was the tallest thing in Las Vegas I cared about. Thank you, champ. That's public service.

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Here's the fight. Fundora (24-1-1, 16 KOs) defends his WBC 154-pound title against Ermal Hadribeaj (23-0-1, 8 KOs), the WBC's No. 1 mandatory challenger, on Saturday, Oct. 17, at The Chelsea inside The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. It's the main event of PBC's "The Fight" on TNT, truTV and DAZN, and the four-fight telecast starts at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific.

The height. BoxRec lists Fundora at 6-foot-5½ with an 80-inch reach. BoxRec's wiki lists Hadribeaj at 178 centimeters, which is about 5-foot-10. That's a seven-and-a-half-inch gap, measured by a record keeper and not announced from a podium. A height you can actually verify. Imagine that.

The stance. Both men fight left-handed. BoxRec has Fundora as a southpaw, and BoxRec's wiki has Hadribeaj as one too. Two lefties headlining in Las Vegas. This is the most left-leaning main event of the year, and I have already registered it to vote. If anybody asks, it's a moderate. It's polling well in the suburbs.

The champion. Fundora is 28 and from Coachella, California. He won the WBC and WBO belts by beating Tim Tszyu in what PBC calls 2024's bloodiest fight, then stopped Chordale Booker, stopped Tszyu after seven rounds in their July 2025 rematch, and stopped Keith Thurman in the sixth in March. That's three knockouts in a row, and he said it out loud at the virtual press conference: "I'm on a three-fight knockout streak and we intend to keep that going." This is his fourth defense of the WBC belt. His only loss came against Brian Mendoza in April 2023.

He also said this on PBC's Instagram Live: "I want to be remembered as a gentleman of the sport. We want people to say that we always kept it real." A champion who wants to be remembered as a gentleman. In 2026. I had to lie down. Somebody take his temperature, because that kind of decency is practically a pre-existing condition now.

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The family. Fundora is trained by his father, Freddy, alongside his younger sister Gabriela, who happens to be the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. PBC calls them the first brother and sister to hold world titles at the same time. This week PBC released Sebastian's training-camp photos from the Tehachapi Mountains, and the photographer was... Gabriela. She's an undisputed champion, a coach and the staff photographer. That's more jobs than a gig worker with no health insurance, except she has four belts and a Ring Magazine title to show for it.

And yes, it's a family business. But every single title in that family was won in a ring, under a referee, on a scorecard. No inherited empire. No son-in-law handed a foreign-policy portfolio. I'm not naming names. I don't have to. My therapist says I'm "making progress," which is what she said last week too.

Also, "undisputed." What a word. My uncle hasn't used it about an election result since 2020. Gabriela uses it about her own résumé. Be like Gabriela.

The challenger. Hadribeaj is 32, born in Tirana, Albania, and now lives and trains in Miami. He earned the mandatory spot in May by outpointing previously unbeaten Bakary Samake over 12 rounds in Oberhausen, Germany, in a final WBC eliminator. His career has taken him through Albania, Germany, Croatia, Uzbekistan and the United Arab Emirates, and this is his first fight in the U.S. since May 2023. If he wins, he says he'll be Albania's first world boxing champion.

An immigrant who moved to Miami, worked his way up step by step, and now wants to win a world title in Las Vegas. In the current political climate, that's the most American story on the card, and I'm crying into my reusable tote bag about it.

He told a group of boxing media, as NY Fights reported: "I'm not just confident for no reason. I earned this position and I earned this confidence." Earned confidence. I'd love to see that catch on in Washington. And from the fight announcement: "If he takes me lightly, he's gonna be in for a big surprise." Underdogs who get underestimated and then win? I keep a folder of those on my phone and reread it every November.

The sanctioning body. The WBC ordered a mandatory, and the champion is actually fighting the mandatory. Rules made, rules followed, on schedule. A functioning rules-based order. In boxing! I haven't seen an institution work this smoothly since my eighth-grade civics teacher explained the system of checks and balances, back when that was theory and not a cliffhanger.

The undercard. WBA featherweight champion Brandon Figueroa (27-2-1, 20 KOs) makes his first defense against former bantamweight champ Tomoki Kameda in the co-main. Jermall Charlo was supposed to face Australia's Koen Mazoudier but pulled out injured, so former champion Armando Reséndiz stepped in. A late replacement steps up when the scheduled guy drops out. Democrats know a little something about that. Marco Romero opens the show against Braulio Ferreira.

My pick. Fundora's height and length are a problem nobody has really solved, and Hadribeaj himself says the plan is getting the distance right and staying out of range of the jab, the cross and the uppercut. But Hadribeaj has never been beaten, and he's only stopped eight of his 23 victims, which means he knows how to go 12 rounds while dodging. I'll take Fundora by stoppage in the second half, with Hadribeaj making it uglier than the odds suggest. If I'm wrong, I'll say so on the record. It's called accountability. Look it up, it's in the dictionary right before "acquitted."

Before the opening bell: Sebastian Fundora's Guess the Purse round is open until 5 p.m. Pacific on Saturday, so call his number now. Gabriela has her own round for her Nov. 20 undisputed defense against Jasmina Zapotoczna in Indio. Take a swing at the sample card on Fantasy Boxing, yell at me in the community, and come back to Boxbid news for the result. If you need more of my condition, my Adames-Zuffa column is still up.

Whatever the judges say Saturday, I'll accept the result. Peacefully. Somebody has to.