Boxing
Who Is Seniesa Estrada and Why Is She Famous?
John Moriello started covering sports in 1982, began digital publishing in 1995, and joined Sportscasting in 2020. A graduate of St. John Fisher University, he finds inspiration in the underdogs and the fascinating stories sports can tell (both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat). John expertly covers all aspects of NASCAR. Beginning with his 2014 coverage at Fox Sports of the aftermath of the dirt-race tragedy in which Kevin Ward Jr. died after being struck by a car driven by NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart, John has excelled as a journalist who specializes in the motorsports world. He previously spent more than three decades covering high school sports and worked as a beat writer covering Big East football and basketball, but NASCAR is now where the true expertise falls. John is a member of the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame (2013), the President of the New York State Sportswriters Association, and a two-time Best of Gannett winner for print and online collaborations whose work has appeared on FoxSports.com and MaxPreps.com.
Get to know John Moriello betterPublished25 Jul 2020
A women’s boxing match in California on Friday, July 24, 2020, looked like a mismatch on paper and turned out worse once the fighters stepped into the ring. Seniesa Estrada inflicted a record-setting beating on Miranda Atkins.
LeBron James, who actually took an interest in the first, couldn’t have had less trouble dunking on a junior-high guard.
Seniesa Estrada is now famous for a lightning-fast knockout
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Interim WBA flyweight champion and WBC silver (i.e., interim) junior flyweight belt holder Seniesa Estrada literally wasted no time Friday in improving her professional boxing record to 19-0.
Estrada pounced on Miranda Adkins from the opening bell and consumed just seven seconds in recording the fastest knockout in the history of women’s boxing.
Adkins didn’t land any punches. Instead, she absorbed seven quick blows, including four to the head. The last shot from Estrada sent Adkins to the canvas by the ropes, and the fight was over without the formality of a 10-count.
Estrada, who began fighting professionally at the age of 18 in May 2011, improved her record to 19-0 with 11 knockouts. She has been growing increasingly dangerous in the ring; six of her last seven fights have ended in knockouts or TKOs.
Adkins’s background in boxing is substantially different. Adkins, 42, took up the sport three years ago and entered the ring with only five fights on her resume – four against boxers who never fought professionally before and the fifth as a rematch. She was a last-minute replacement as Estrada’s opponent on the card in Indio, California, because Jacky Calvo had to withdraw due to a knee injury.
“I knew I had more experience than her,” Estrada told CBS Sports. “Once I went in there, I let my punches go and couldn’t stop. She’s in there to hurt me as well, so I went for the knockout.”
Seniesa Estrada is a veteran fighter out of Los Angeles
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Nicknamed “Super Bad,” 28-year-old Seniesa Estrada has been fighting for most of her life and appears to be on the verge of genuine stardom as a boxer. Her seven-second knockout Friday earned a social-media shoutout – “Bang bang, night night” from NBA star LeBron James, with whom Estrada shares an endorsement for a supplement product.
She captured the WBC silver light flyweight belt in November 2018 in her 15th pro fight, then added the WBA interim flyweight championship a year later. The latter win was over Marlen Esparza, an Olympic bronze medalist.
“I’m just a fight or two away from being in that conversation as one of the best pound-for-pound women in the sport,” Estrada said.
Estrada has been in the ring since she attended a match with her father and brother as an 8-year-old. She often sparring against boys since there were so few girls in the sport. Her father, Joe, was a former gang member who got off the streets to train her as a fighter.
Her first experience in the ring was against a young boy at a time when Seniesa Estrada was completely lacking in technique.
“She just whaled away, and it was like, ‘Wow, I just saw that.’ The (boy’s) coach said, ‘Stop, stop.’ They stopped the fight. The little boy was crying, and that’s the moment where I said my little girl’s a fighter. She was meant to do this.”
Joe Estrada, 2010 interview
She would go 97-4 as an amateur before turning pro shortly before her 19th birthday.
What’s next for this emerging star?
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The coronavirus pandemic threw a hiccup into Seniesa Estrada’s timetable, but the seven-second knockout of Miranda Atkins allows her to get back into action on short notice to start making up months on inactivity.
Estrada has said she believes she could be fighting for a world championship later this year or early in 2021. If that’s the case, two of the obvious candidates would be Anabel Ortiz, who holds the WBA mini-flyweight championship, or Yesenia Gomez, the WBC junior flyweight titleholder.
