Juan Francisco Estrada-Roman Gonzalez II: Do Not Miss This Fight

Published

4 years ago

March 9, 2021

Juan-Francisco-Estrada-Roman-Gonzalez-II-Do-Not-Miss-This-Fight

Of all the sequels that boxing could make, Juan Francisco Estrada-Roman Gonzalez II, staged this weekend in Dallas, Texas, is the most fascinating. Superflyweight has been over-delivering on top-class competition for years now but this being the second Gonzalez-Estrada fight, coming more than eight years after the original, makes it special even for 115lbs.

Their first fight was a classic and classical, a combat of legitimate intensity fought at the highest-level boxing can deliver. Estrada, fast-handed, longer and taller than Gonzalez, started fast and stayed fast while Gonzalez, immediately aware of an unexpected danger, sunk tactical boreholes to try to find the answer. The answer, as it happened, was as old as boxing, a pressure and corner style, paying tolls, picking himself to win two thirds of the spells of technical craftsmanship they swapped inside, Estrada dangerous with uppercuts, Gonzalez lashing him with the compact combinations that made him famous.

It was close and remained close and many of the rounds were close and this was unexpected. Estrada was unrated and underrated, 26-1 and had never fought in a twelve-round fight. I think about that sometimes; Estrada fought his first twelve round fight against an absolute monster of a champion in Roman Gonzalez, an all-time-great pound-for-pounder. Estrada took an early lead in the fight, was pegged back by a tactical adjustment and began to fight his way out of the predicament. Then Gonzalez adjusted again.

Estrada was inexperienced and unheralded; he is anything but that now.

Ranked number nine pound-for-pound by TBRB he is the reigning champion of a 115lb division which remains the deepest in all of boxing, he is thirty years old and 41-3, in his physical prime and is coming off a stoppage victory over Carlos Cuadras, a man who took Gonzalez to the absolute edge in 2016.

“I am stronger and have more desire than the first fight,” said Estrada in the build-up. “In the first fight, I was 21 years old, and I had no experience of big international fights, he was a pound-for-pound star at that time, but now I think this time it favours me.”

It is impossible to verify that the established Estrada is more motivated than he was as a twenty-one-year-old with none of the material trappings he has since gathered, but everything else he says is irrefutably true. And there is more.

“We are fighting two weight classes above the first fight, so it is already very different. I know that I can win this time. I know it’s a tough fight and I think it will be a better fight, but I have already faced him, I know his qualities and I feel that I can beat a fighter who has been knocked out.”

Here, Estrada touches upon two key points. First is size; there can be little doubt that the 115lb limit suits Estrada more than Gonzalez. 115lbs was always going to be the absolute roof for Roman, a short, stocky fighter who brings pressure and absorbs punishment despite an elite defence, he can ill-afford to take on bigger men. That he has made it from 105lbs to 115lbs is in itself a testimony to his surprising elusiveness; but these returns have been diminishing as the smaller man has aged.

Which brings us to Estrada’s second point. Gonzalez, at thirty-three, an advanced age for a fighter who turned professional at 105lbs, has been in wars, and he has been hit and has been hurt. He is indeed a fighter “who has been knocked out” having been devasted by Wisaksil Wangek as long ago as 2017. Since, Gonzalez has glimmered, smouldered, but never blazed as he did in the days when he was tearing top fighters to pieces. Estrada sees something different now than he did the first time he looked upon Gonzalez, and the confidence is clearly flowing.

Gonzalez, meanwhile, is training principally for power. This makes sense. His first attack in earnest upon 115lbs saw him match Carlos Cuadras in 2016. It would be an exaggeration to say that Cuadras walked through him – that ignominy awaits at bantamweight should he have an unfortunate rush of blood – but it was shocking to see Cuadras live with him for spells of exchanges. This limitation was then firmly underlined by Wangek and since, Gonzalez has been matched stiffly but not dangerously. In terms of quality of opponent, Estrada is the first to represent a callback to an opponent as good as Wangek since that knockout loss.

“One of the things we are working on is long combinations. He threw more than 1000 blows in the previous fight, but now he`s punching with greater power,” trainer Marcos Caballero told Boxing Scene. “We are going to war with Estrada.”

Talk of war is well and good but the postscript was more interesting to me:

“We know the quality of the opponent, but we trust that in the ring, the one who arrives better prepared and with the best strategy, will win. That will be us.”

Roman’s strategy in the first fight, was war. He recognised quickly that he was being presented with a different proposition than he had been prepared for and adjusted accordingly. The final adjustment he made was to introduce in earnest his left-hook. It was awful to watch and underlined Estrada’s toughness for all time.

Remember, this was not superfly Gonzalez who bounces hard punches off hard fighters; this was light-fly Gonzalez who steamrolled those he could hit. At the beginning of the eighth, as Estrada tried to operate his own right, having slipped behind in the fight for the first time, Gonzalez repeatedly landed his torpedo-like left-hook and riffed behind it with increasingly fluid, terror-laden combinations. Gonzalez is the best combination puncher in history below 112lbs – with apologies to Ricardo Lopez fans – and when he finds that afterburner, he is essentially impossible to beat.

The problem is that these torque-filled punches have proven resistible at 115lbs – that is why the interest in power-punching during training. Estrada was perhaps the only man below 115lbs that really stood up to these punches in a meaningful way, in a way that allowed him the opportunity, at least, of turning the tide. Of the five available rounds after Gonzalez ignited his left, he won three of them; but it is notable that Estrada was able to outfight his prestigious foe in what must have felt to both men a key twelfth round. Still, the predominance or otherwise of the Gonzalez left hook may determine the result of this fight.

Round eight will be too late this time, I suspect. Estrada was close to being too big for Gonzalez first time around and that was in a weight division that better suited the smaller man. Now Estrada is in the weight division that he arguably most belongs in while there is ever a sense that Gonzalez is waiting in the knowledge of the bigger man. The law of Joe Louis says this though: once a puncher has found a mover, he has found him for all time. While I am not suggesting Gonzalez is the equal of Louis, he is, or at least was of that class by my eye; there is a possibility that having found Estrada with his left in the eighth of the last fight, he will find him in the first of this, their second fight, regardless of how long has elapsed. In the first fight Estrada bagged the first two rounds, the key punch perhaps the uppercut; Gonzalez needs to meet and greet that punch with one of his own and outfight the bigger, younger, faster man early, a tall order for even a great fighter.

Roman Gonzalez looks different now. His face, full even at 105lbs in a boyish way, has taken on the puffiness of a civilian. He never wore the visage of a fighter but he is beginning to look like the favourite uncle of your youth. He talks openly of retirement. He knows some ending is approaching.

He is a dramatic underdog here, in the twilight of his career. Should he win, he will match Wangek in a second dramatic rematch. If he loses it will be retirement or the continued career of a fighter with problems. There is nowhere for Gonzalez to go if Estrada masters him; 118lbs would be a dangerous disaster, 112lbs is beyond the reach of his pugilist’s body. Either he becomes the champion of a division in which he has always walked the tightrope or his career as an elite sportsman is over.

Estrada could stand to lose and box on, even 118lbs not entirely beyond his lither frame but elite sports is so rarely about “who wants it more.” It is about who is better. I believe Estrada is a better 115lb boxer than Gonzalez – therefore I pick him to win a fight that feels close, with close rounds, but where the scorecards speak of a comfortable win, somewhere in the region of 117-111.

But – keep your eyes peeled for that Gonzalez left early in the fight. I’ve been publishing fight reports on Roman Gonzalez for more than a decade now and if it is said of him that he is training for war, I believe it. Winning a war remains his last best chance of becoming a champion once more.

At the risk of sounding redundant, do not miss this fight.

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Matt McGrain

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Early Results from Riyadh where Hamzah Sheeraz was Awarded a Gift Draw

Published

22 minutes ago

February 22, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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After two 6-round appetizers, British light heavyweights Joshua Buatsi and Callum Smith got the show rolling with a lusty 12-round skirmish. Things went south in the middle of the seven-fight main card when WBC middleweight champion Carlos Adames locked horns with challenger Hamzah Sheeraz. This was a drab fight owing to a milquetoast performance by the favored Sheeraz.

Heading in, the lanky six-foot-three Sheeraz, whose physique is mindful of a young Thomas Hearns, was undefeated in 21 fights. Having stopped five of his last six opponents in two rounds or less, the 25-year-old Englishman was touted as the next big thing in the middleweight division. However, he fought off his back foot the entire contest, reluctant to let his hands go, and Adames kept his title when the bout was scored a draw.

Sheeraz had the crowd in his corner and two of the judges scored the match with their ears. Their tallies were 115-114 for Sheeraz and 114-114. The third judge had it 118-110 for Adames, the 30-year old Dominican, now 24-1-1, who had Ismael Salas in his corner.

Ortiz-Madrimov

Super welterweight Vergil Ortiz Jr, knocked out his first 21 opponents, begging the question of how he would react when he finally faced adversity. He showed his mettle in August of last year when he went a sizzling 12 rounds with fellow knockout artist Serhii Bohachuk, winning a hard-fought decision. Tonight he added another feather in his cap with a 12-round unanimous decision over Ismail Madrimov, prevailing on scores of 117-111 and 115-113 twice.

Ortiz won by adhering tight to Robert Garcia’s game plan. The elusive Madrimov, who bounces around the ring like the energizer bunny, won the early rounds. But eventually Ortiz was able to cut the ring off and turned the tide in his favor by landing the harder punches. It was the second straight loss for Madrimov (10-2-1), a decorated amateur who had lost a close but unanimous decision to Terence Crawford in his previous bout.

Kabayel-Zhang

No heavyweight has made greater gains in the last 15 months than Agit Kabayel. The German of Kurdish descent, whose specialty is body punching, made his third straight appearance in Riyadh tonight and, like in the previous two, fashioned a knockout. Today, although out-weighed by more than 40 pounds, he did away with Zhilei “Big Bang” Zhang in the sixth round.

It didn’t start out well for Kabayel. The New Jersey-based, six-foot-six Zhang, a two-time Olympian for China, started fast and plainly won the opening round. Kabayel beat him to the punch from that point on, save for one moment when Zhang put him on the canvas with a straight left hand.

That happened in the fifth round, but by the end of the frame, the 41-year-old Zhang was conspicuously gassed. The end for the big fellow came at the 2:29 mark of round six when he couldn’t beat the count after crumbling to the canvas in a delayed reaction after taking a hard punch to his flabby midsection.

Kabayel remains undefeated at 26-0 (18 KOs). Zhang (27-3-1) hadn’t previously been stopped.

Smith-Buatsi

The all-British showdown between light heavyweights Joshua Buatsi and Callum Smith was a grueling, fan-friendly affair. A former 168-pound world title-holder, Smith, 34, won hard-earned unanimous decision, prevailing on scores of 115-113, 116-112, and a ludicrous 119-110.

There were no knockdowns, but Liverpool’s Smith, who advanced to 31-2 (22) finished the contest with a bad gash in the corner of his right eye. It was the first pro loss for Buatsi (19-1), an Olympic bronze medalist who entered the contest a small favorite and was the defending “interim” title-holder.

This contest was also a battle of wits between two of America’s most prominent trainers, Buddy McGirt (Smith) and Virgil Hunter (Buatsi).

Check back shortly for David Avila’s wrap-up of the last three fights.

Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom

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Cain Sandoval KOs Mark Bernaldez in the Featured Bout at Santa Ynez

Published

16 hours ago

February 21, 2025

David A. Avila

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Northern California’s Cain Sandoval remained undefeated with a knockout win over Mark Bernaldez in a super lightweight battle on Friday on a 360 Promotions card.

Sandoval (15-0, 13 KOs) of Sacramento needed four rounds to figure out tough Filipino fighter Bernaldez (25-7, 14 KOs) in front of a packed crowd at Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez.

Bernaldez had gone eight rounds against Mexico’s very tough Oscar Duarte. He showed no fear for Sandoval’s reputed power and both fired bombs at each other from the second round on.

Things turned in favor of Sandoval when he targeted the body and soon had Bernaldez in retreat. It was apparent Sandoval had discovered a weakness.

In the beginning of the fourth Sandoval fired a stiff jab to the body that buckled Bernaldez but he did not go down. And when both resumed in firing position Sandoval connected with an overhand right and down went the Filipino fighter. He was counted out by referee Rudy Barragan at 34 seconds of the round.

“I’m surprised he took my jab to the body. I respect that. I have a knockout and I’m happy about that,” Sandoval said.

Other Bouts

Popular female fighter Lupe Medina (9-0) remained undefeated with a solid victory over the determined Agustina Vazquez (4-3-2) by unanimous decision after eight rounds in a minimumweight fight between Southern Californians.

Early on Vazquez gave Medina trouble disrupting her patter with solid jabs. And when Medina overloaded with combination punches, she was laced with counters from Vazquez during the first four rounds.

Things turned around in the fifth round as Medina used a jab to keep Vazquez at a preferred distance. And when she attacked it was no more than two-punch combination and maintaining a distance.

Vazquez proved determined but discovered clinching was not a good idea as Medina took advantage and overran her with blows. Still, Vazquez looked solid. All three judges saw it 79-73 for Medina.

A battle between Southern Californian’s saw Compton’s Christopher Rios (11-2) put on the pressure all eight rounds against Eastvale’s Daniel Barrera (8-1-1) and emerged the winner by majority decision in a flyweight battle.

It was Barrera’s first loss as a pro. He never could discover how to stay off the ropes and that proved his downfall. Neither fighter was knocked down but one judge saw it 76-76, and two others 79-73 for Rios.

In a welterweight fight Gor Yeritsyan (20-1,16 KOs) scorched Luis Ramos (23-7) with a 12-punch combination the sent him to the mat in the second round. After Ramos beat the count he was met with an eight punch volley and the fight was stopped at 2:11 of the second round by knockout.

Super feather prospect Abel Mejia (7-0, 5 KOs) floored Alfredo Diaz (9-12) in the fifth round but found the Mexican fighter to be very durable in their six-round fight. Mejia caught Diaz with a left hook in the fifth round for a knockdown. But the fight resumed with all three judges scoring it 60-53 for Mejia who fights out of El Modena, Calif.

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The Return of David Alaverdian

Published

21 hours ago

February 21, 2025

The Sweet Science

By TSS Special Correspondent David Harazduk — After David Alaverdian (8-0-1, 6 KOs) scored a gritty victory against a tough Nicaraguan journeyman named Enrique Irias, his plans suddenly changed. The flashy flyweight from Nahariya, Israel hoped to face even tougher opposition and then challenge for a world title within a year or so. But a prolonged illness forced David to rip up the script.

The Irias fight was over 22 months ago. On Saturday, Feb. 22, Alaverdian will be making his first appearance in the ring since that win when he faces veteran road warrior Josue “Zurdo” Morales (31-16-4, 13 KOs) at the Westgate Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. It’s the fifth promotion by Las Vegas attorney Stephen Reid whose inaugural card was at this venue on Feb. 13, 2020.

“I’m excited to come back,” Alaverdian declared.

During his preparation for Irias two years ago, Alaverdian felt fatigue after a routine six-round sparring session. “It was on April 1, 2023, about ten days before my fight. It felt like an April Fool’s joke,” he said. He came down with a sore throat, a headache, and congestion. He soon developed trouble breathing. At first, he thought his seasonal asthma had flared up, but his condition soon worsened. No matter what he did, Alaverdian could no longer take deep breaths. Fatigue continued to plague him. His heart constantly raced. Instead of breathing from his diaphragm, he was breathing from his chest. He sought out numerous doctors in the United States and in Israel.

His symptoms were finally diagnosed as Dysfunctional Breathing (DB). DB is a condition that can stem from stress and is often misdiagnosed. Its symptoms include dyspnea and tachycardia, both of which David experienced.

While receiving treatment, the Vegas-based pro went back to Israel where he coached aspiring fighters. “David’s influence on Israeli boxing is amazing, because he shows we can succeed in a big business even though we come from a small country,” said another undefeated Israeli flyweight, 20-year-old Yonatan Landman (7-0, 7 KOs). “A lot more Israelis are going to dare to succeed.”

Landman was able to work with Alaverdian during David’s return to Israel. “He is a great guy and a friend,” Landman said. “He has a lot of willingness to help, share his knowledge, and help you move forward.”

Alaverdian finally started to feel like he could compete again eight months ago. He won last year’s Israeli national amateur championship and competed in Olympic qualifiers. Now, he’s preparing to fight as a professional once again. “He doesn’t mention anything about [his breathing issues] like he did before,” his coach Cedric Ferguson said about this camp. “He’s been working like there’s no issue at all.”

It has been a whirlwind week for the 31-year-old Alaverdian. In addition to putting the finishing touches on his preparation ahead of Saturday’s comeback fight, David got married on Tuesday. His mom came over from Israel for the wedding and will stay for the fight. “It’s a good distraction,” David said of this week’s significant events. “It helps me. That way I don’t have to focus on the fight all day.”

Josue Morales, a 32 year old from Houston, hopes to play spoiler on Saturday. The crafty southpaw has never been stopped during his 52-fight career. “He’s a seasoned guy with a lot of experience,” Alaverdian said of Morales. “He knows how to move around the ring and is more of a technical boxer. He’s a tough opponent for someone who has been out of the ring for two years.”

A win Saturday night would complete a monumental week for David Alaverdian, both in and out of the ring, repairing the once-shredded script.

Doors open at the Westgate fight arena at 6:30 pm. The first bout goes at 7:00. Seven fights are scheduled including an 8-round female fight between Las Vegas light flyweight Yadira Bustillos and Argentine veteran Tamara Demarco.

NOTE: Author David Harazduk has run The Jewish Boxing Blog since 2010. You can find him at Twitter/X @JewishBoxing and Instagram.

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