CARSON, California – There were times Saturday night when a fatigued, reckless Carlos Ocampo seemed susceptible to getting knocked out by Sebastian Fundora.

The determined Mexican contender lasted all 12 rounds, however, in a fight Fundora won decisively on all three scorecards at Dignity Health Sports Park. Fundora figured that Ocampo would be a tough out because he wanted to disprove skeptics that dismissed him as an overmatched opponent defined entirely by his first-round, technical-knockout loss to Errol Spence Jr. four years ago.

“I figured with this fight, he was gonna be a tough guy because, you know, all the crap everybody was talking about him,” Fundora said during his post-fight press conference. “You know, ‘that first-round knockout, that first-round knockout, that first-round knockout.’ And with that, I knew he was gonna come out with a big heart, probably a bigger heart than anybody I ever fought because he had something to prove. And we just worked from that. We knew he was gonna be a tough guy. He obviously learned from that fight with Spence. So, you know, 12 straight wins, it meant something.”

The 26-year-old Ocampo won 12 consecutive contests between his losses to Spence (28-0, 22 KOs) and Fundora (20-0-1, 13 KOs), a 6-foot-6 southpaw from Coachella, California. The Ensenada native took a lot of punishment from Fundora, who abandoned his plan to box following the fourth round in order to trade inside with Ocampo over the final eight rounds of their “Showtime Championship Boxing” main event.

There were moments when Fundora felt their fight would be stopped, perhaps by referee Jack Reiss, who took close looks at Ocampo (34-2, 22 KOs) between several rounds.

“He pulled through and he finished the fight,” Fundora said. “And hat’s off to him.”

Judges Rudy Barragan (117-111), Daniel Fitzgerald (118-110) and Lou Moret (119-109) all scored their fight for Fundora by wide distances. The 24-year-old Fundora retained the WBC interim super welterweight title he won when he stopped Erickson Lubin (24-2, 17 KOs) after the ninth round of a fantastic “Fight of the Year” candidate April 9 at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.

“I felt like the first four rounds I boxed because I wanted to not just show myself, but my father [and trainer, Freddy] and everybody else that we can box,” Fundora said. “And we’ve been doing that the whole camp – boxing, boxing, lots of range. But I felt it was moving a little bit too slow for me and I wanted to excite the fans a little bit more, you know, give ‘em their money’s worth. And we went in there, we banged, we did the normal ‘Towering Inferno’ style. And we got the fans riled up and, yeah, we got the job done.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.