“The Towering Inferno” stands 6-foot-6, historically tall for the junior middleweight division. He is also 28, when boxers usually struggle to squeeze down to weights at which they thrived when they were younger.

Somehow, Fundora finds it easier than ever to weigh in at 154 pounds. In fact, the lanky, lean, left-handed fighter is so diligent that he weighed less than 154, the division’s limit, for each of his past 16 fights, a streak that began in November 2018, when he was only 20.

Fundora officially weighed 152½, below the contracted cap, for his seven-round stoppage of Tim Tszyu in their rematch almost 15 months ago.

Tszyu has since moved up to middleweight, yet Fundora (24-1-1, 16 KOs) remains in the division he has called home for nine years. He will defend his WBC belt against Albania’s Ermal Hadribeaj (23-0-1, 8 KOs), his mandatory challenger, on Saturday night in a main event DAZN will stream internationally and TNT and truTV will televise in the United States from The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas (8 p.m. ET).

Discipline primarily enables Fundora, The Ring’s No. 3 contender for an unclaimed championship, to comfortably make weight without incident.

“It’s just [about] working hard,” Fundora told The Ring. “We’re not crazy draining ourselves, wearing sauna suits and losing the weight like that. I eat good. I eat a lot. A lot of people probably think I suffer, starving myself. I remember the Tim Tszyu fight, the first one, and the Australian media was going crazy because we ate pizza I think the day before the weigh-in or something.

“But they were almost complaining, like, ‘That’s not how it should be done.’ I can make the weight. Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about me not making the weight. Maybe worry about your fighter or other fighters [having] a problem, coming in eating cheeseburgers or pizzas or whatever they wanna eat, tacos, and not making the weight.”

Fundora stays in shape between bouts by working on his family’s mountainous, sprawling property in central California, where his younger sister, undisputed flyweight champ Gabriela Fundora, also lives and trains. Whereas contemporaries often pack on pounds if they’re not in training camp and subsequently struggle to make weight, Fundora never gets above 165, which makes camps simpler.

“We go in there, we step on the scale and we make the weight,” he said. “It’s never a problem. We walk around at this weight. On fight night, walking into the ring, I’ll probably weigh 163. I think that’s what you want to be walking in at, nothing too crazy. You don’t wanna be jumping up to 180. Conor Benn, that’s the perfect example. That’s the most recent example. You don’t wanna be like that.”

Benn ballooned to around 180 pounds prior to his second-round knockout defeat to WBC welterweight champ Ryan Garcia last month. Benn hadn’t fought at the welterweight maximum of 147 in four-plus years and admitted afterward that depleting himself hurt his chances of becoming competitive against Garcia.

Fundora’s fight week has been a lot less stressful, and not just for the Coachella, California, native, and his father/trainer, Freddy. Tom Brown, who has been the primary promoter of many Fundora fights for Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions, is thankful for the family’s professionalism.

“Obviously, it’s great to never have to worry about a fighter missing weight,” Brown told The Ring. “You just know that he and his father, what they do, their training is unconventional. You see what they do, with their setup on their property, and it works. So, I’ve never worried about his conditioning, his weight, anything with him. He’s a professional. I don’t get how he does it, someone that tall. But it’s nice to not even have to think about it.”

With plenty of meaningful fights for him at junior middleweight, Fundora is confident he won’t need to consider moving up in the foreseeable future.

“I think it’s getting easier [to make 154] because my appetite is kinda slowing down now, not wanting to eat as much as before,” he said. “I’d eat a lot, a lot, a lot, and still lose it no problem. But now it’s having like one plate for dinner, instead of three. It’s like I’m content with that, and it’s easy to lose that.”