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Tina Rupprecht travels to the US hoping to upset Seniesa Estrada’s plans in Ring title bout

Seniesa Estrada (L) and Tina Rupprecht (R) face-off during the press conference prior to their March 25 WBA & WBC minimumweight unification championship fight at FSU Student Rec Center on March 23, 2023 in Fresno, California. (Photo by Mikey Williams/Top Rank Inc via Getty Images)
Fighters Network
23
Mar

There are only a few chances out there to become the first person to achieve something great, and Tina Rupprecht is getting that chance on Saturday. She feels more than ready for it.

“I feel very, very honored and proud to fight for this important title, because not everybody can fight for this title,” said Germany’s Rupprecht, the current WBC strawweight titleholder who will be fighting to become The Ring’s inaugural champion at that weight. “I am very happy and very proud. This is for sure another motivation as well, to fight for three titles.”

Rupprecht has a tall order in front of her. She will be taking on WBA titleholder Seniesa Estrada in a unification bout at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California. The 10-round bout is the co-main event of a card headlined by the clash between former unified junior welterweight titleholder Jose Ramirez and Richard Commey.

Both fights will air live on ESPN (10 p.m. ET/ 7 p.m. PT).



The fight took a while to become a reality, but Rupprecht (12-0-1, 3 knockouts) never lost faith.

“We had been negotiating the fight for a long time, almost one year,” said Rupprecht, 30, in a phone interview. “I wanted this fight very much, but it was very complicated because Estrada changed her promoter and that took a lot of time. Now I am happy that the fight is set.”

Estrada’s departure from Golden Boy Promotions and her new job as ones Top Rank’s best female fighters, along with her duties as TV commentator, conspired to cause the delay, but now things are underway and Rupprecht feels the time is right for her to make a statement.

Just don’t ask her how she plans to get there.

“Well, that’s my secret (laughs),” said Rupprecht, when asked about her approach on how to fight Estrada, currently rated at No. 6 in The Ring’s pound-for-pound ratings. “Sorry, I cannot tell you here! But you will see on the 25th, it’s going to be a huge fight. I think there’s never been a minimum weight fight like that, but I am looking forward to it. It will be a great fight.”

Against Estrada (23-0, 9 KOs), Rupprecht will be facing a much more experienced fighter, and in her US debut to boot, but her confidence level is high in that regard too.

“In most of my fights I faced more experienced fighters. But I never cared about that because although this has mostly been the case, that doesn’t mean anything to me. I am always 100 percent when I get in the ring, and I come to win.”

Estrada is rated at No. 1 by The Ring at this weight, while Rupprecht is No. 3. That fact, combined with the fact that the lower divisions contain most of the best talents in women’s boxing today, should be reason enough to hope for plenty of fireworks in this high-stakes bout.

“I do respect Estrada, she is a very good fighter,” said Rupprecht. “Obviously I watched some of her fights, but I am not the type of person who watches the videos from the last fights all the time. I know her style, I will probably focus on myself and on my strengths and on what I can do, not on what my opponent can do.”

 

Diego M. Morilla writes for The Ring since 2013. He has also written for HBO.com, ESPN.com and many other magazines, websites, newspapers and outlets since 1993. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and an elector for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He has won two first-place awards in the BWAA’s annual writing contest, and he is the moderator of The Ring’s Women’s Ratings Panel. He served as copy editor for the second era of The Ring en Español (2018-2020) and is currently a writer and editor for RingTV.com.

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