Inside Jesse 'Bam' Rodriguez's hardest camp yet: Four-hour training sessions, brutal sparring and family sacrifice

Jesse 'Bam' Rodriguez has spent most of his career making the extraordinary look routine, but in California during camp there was a different kind of urgency in the air. 

With the chance to move a step closer to becoming the undisputed super-flyweight champion, the 25-year-old was deep in the most demanding camp of his life and Daily Mail Sport were granted rare access to witness it up close. 

On November 22, Rodriguez will attempt to add the WBA belt held by Argentina's Fernando Daniel Martinez to the WBC and WBO titles he already owns, in a fight that will shape the next phase of one of boxing's brightest careers.

Rodriguez prefers to train in one long, punishing block each day, and on the morning we visited, he had already wrapped his hands, stretched, and begun stalking the ring like a man warming to the violence he knows is expected of him. 

What followed was four hours of non-stop work: rounds of sparring that bled into pad sessions, bag work that led into rounds on the speed ball, and finally an intense strength and conditioning circuit that left even the coaches wiping sweat from their brows. 

There were no breaks, no pauses, no drifting outside to catch breath. This was the full dose, the method that has carried him to 22-0, to world titles in two weight classes, to the brink of undisputed.

During sparring, a queue formed at the ropes. One after another, fighters stepped forward to test themselves, though the expression on their faces suggested they felt more obligated than eager. 

'Everyone loves lining up fight Bam, they're all dying to have a go with him,' one of his trainers muttered, half-proud, half-amused. Inside the ring, Rodriguez was clinical. Calm. A southpaw without wasted movement, he reads opponents with the same poise he shows when he talks about his family - quietly, without bravado, but with conviction.

And family is woven into every corner of the gym. His young daughter wandered between the heavy bags, giggling at the thud of gloves on leather, clinging to her mother's leg as she watched Bam work in and out of the ring.

Even in the heat of sparring, the 25-year-old found a moment between rounds to walk to the ropes and kiss her on the cheek. It was impossible not to smile as she shouted 'daddy' with unbridled excitement while he traded punches in the ring.

His partner sat a few feet away, accustomed now to the long hours, the routine that repeats day after day until fight week. 'If it weren't for my family being here, then I probably would've gone crazy already,' Rodriguez says later, finally sitting down as the last sweat towel is thrown into the wash basket. 

'Since the Australia fight, they've been coming with me, and it just makes me feel like I'm back home. Having my daughter and my girlfriend here with me just makes me a better person overall.'

Being able to look up from a round on the pads and see his daughter playing is not a luxury; it is essential. 'Whenever they go back home, I'm just like lonely and like nothing to do,' he admits. 

'My last camp, my daughter started walking out here, so if I left them back home, I would have missed that.' They are returning home on Sunday, just before camp reaches its hardest stretch. 'It's gonna be a little hard,' he says quietly. 'But that just pushes me more to get the job done.'

Now, Rodriguez will have double the motivation. Rodriguez was forced to skip Wednesday night's open workout after dashing away to witness the birth of his second child via FaceTime. It may not have been how he wanted to welcome his son into the world, but he couldn't be happier about his arrival. 

If you think Rodriguez sounds grounded when speaking about his family, it is because he knows exactly where he came from and what was given up so that he could stand in this position. Rodriguez's rise to elite status has been one of talent meeting sacrifice, and some of those sacrifices remain difficult for him to speak about. 

His family wasn't simply frugal during his childhood; they were all-in. Holiday money, birthday money, Christmas money - all of it went to boxing. Not just for Bam, but for his brothers too.

'It's not even a joke,' he says, almost embarrassed by the memory. 'It was really like that. In our third year boxing, we stopped getting gifts. Me, my brother that were boxing didn't get presents. Even my other brother who was just going to school and travelling with us didn't get anything. 

'He didn't get birthday presents, he didn't get Christmas presents. He sacrificed just as much as my parents despite not even wanting to box himself.' Even now, he still tries to repay him. 'I like to give back to him as well. To this day.'

The picture became clearer the more he talked: his father being fired for constantly missing work or arriving late because he was driving Bam to tournaments; his mother taking on double shifts to replace the lost income. 

'As a kid, I didn't really understand what was going on,' he says. 'But now that I'm an older adult, I realise. My dad, he got fired from his job. He had to miss multiple days, and he wasn't getting paid for those days, and my mom was working double just to cover the cost of travel and bills back home. It was all because they wanted to support my career.'

He paused, not for effect, but because remembering still stung. 'Realising the sacrifices they made as an adult today… it pushes me more and more each day. I want to give back to them. That's my way of thanking them.'

He insisted that their sacrifices never created pressure, at least not the kind that paralyses. 'Not pressure, but more motivation,' he says. 'Just knowing what they sacrificed, and wanting to give back to them… that pushes me to this day.'

It also pushed him to make one of the biggest decisions of his young life: dropping out of school to pursue boxing full-time. 'I risked it,' he says matter-of-factly. 'I believed in my abilities so I dropped out. If I stayed in school, who knows what would have happened? I probably wouldn't be as far as I am today. I dropped out, and look what I became.'

What he became is extraordinary. A unified champion at flyweight and again at super-flyweight. The youngest world champion in the sport at 22. The man who knocked out Estrada, outclassed Cuadras, dominated Rungvisai, outpointed Sunny Edwards and overwhelmed Phumelele Cafu. 

The Ring ranks him No.6 pound-for-pound. A win over Martinez - the undefeated Argentine pressure machine - and Rodriguez would have a very real claim to join the sport's top five.

'At the moment, I feel like I'm placed correctly,' he says. 'But come November 22, if I'm able to go out there and perform how I have been against a fighter like Martinez, that's definitely gonna put me up there with the Usyks, Crawfords, and Inoue.'

The next steps after Martinez are already mapped out. Short-term? Undisputed. Medium-term? A move to bantamweight, then perhaps featherweight. Long-term? A life well beyond boxing. 

'I've always told my coaches I don't want to box past 30,' he says. 'I'm 25 right now. I'll be 26 in January. So like four years left in my career.'

His plans after boxing are surprisingly modest for a man who could be a multimillionaire by then. 'Invest my money. Open up my own coffee shop,' he says with a grin. 'I love coffee and it makes me happy. I want others to experience the same. My go-to is a vanilla latte, but lately I've been into cold brews. Cold brews with cold foam.'

But first he must deal with Martinez. First he must unify the division. First he must get through the final stretch without the little girl who runs between heavy bags cheering for him.

In a few short days, Rodriguez will step into the ring in Riyadh, the culmination of years of sacrifice, sweat, and relentless focus. The heavy bags will fall silent, the gym will empty, and for twelve rounds, it will be just him, Martinez, and the weight of everything he has worked for.