By Bart Barry-
SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Onto the mess of rainbows and the Beach Boys and vivacity of this city’s Pier, else the whole effort mightn’t come off: A cleansing be needed because what happened Saturday in the grittier unhappier but still uniquely special climes of Carson, 20 or so miles southsoutheast of here, brought something funereal – a funereality? – disproportionate to its event. It was not merely an a-side got stiffened in the main, an all too infrequent occurrence anymore, but how remarkably few b-side supporters attended, and thus how remarkably quiet got ringside within 15 minutes of Sor Rungvisai-Gonzalez 2’s opening bell.
The compulsories: Thai super flyweight champion Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek iced Nicaragua’s Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez early in round 4 of their rematch in the tennis stadium at StubHub Center. Chocolatito entered the arena, as much a West Coast mecca for aficionados as Madison Square Garden in the East, with a surge of excitement, a wildflower festival of Nicaraguan flags suddenly flying everywhere round the bowl, but left 45 minutes later on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, a precautious formality, we’re assured, but possibly more: Nobody liked the way Chocolatito twice crumpled on the bluemat – his arm chickenwinged behind him, knockdown 1, from which he rose with eyes that went startled to incredulous to fearful, shortly before he got put in savasana.
What was understandably lost in Chocolatito’s breaking was Sor Rungvisai’s lonely ecstasy – while commission officials and doctors rushed awkwardly through the ropes to Chocolatito’s disconnected consciousness and indifferent body Sor Rungvisai even more awkwardly performed a victory somersault stageleft. It was the first indication in the six months we’ve known him he knew Roman Gonzalez was anybody at all and beating Gonzalez was a lifechanging feat. And therein lay Sor Rungvisai’s defining advantage. He didn’t appear to care for a moment of his 45 or so minutes of combat with Chocolatito what aficionados opined of Chocolatito or what Chocolatito’s career led him to opine of himself. To Sor Rungvisai he was a smaller man open often to exchanges and given to complaining quickly to officials about what headbutts happened accidentally till Sor Rungvisai saw their outsized effect on Chocolatito’s spirits and began accidenting them frequently.
A telltale tell it was, too, when Chocolatito began his Saturday appeals before the fight was a halfround old. Sor Rungvisai ignored the referee and watched Chocolatito, unblinking – and did you notice the man didn’t blink even once during their Friday postweight staredown in the brilliant California sun? – then knew he had the little Nicaraguan and acted like it. Sor Rungvisai brutalized Chocolatito with the punches Chocolatito blocked and worse yet with those he didn’t: Welcome to super flyweight, flyweight! Just because Chocolatito’s body no longer wished to touch 112 pounds semiannually did not him a super flyweight make, and if Carlos Cuadras spoke such to him in short declarative sentences last year Sor Rungvisai growled it in March and roared it on Saturday.
However Chocolatito prepped for their rematch, and one senses a wrongheaded emphasis on Sor Rungvisai’s head headed Chocolatito’s camp itinerary, it all got obviously scrambled to apart before the second round was through and probably well before that. Whatever his supporters told him about a March robbery that truly wasn’t Chocolatito rededicated himself, etc., to avenging his career’s first loss and got properly flattened in fewer than four rounds, and when he returns to Managua and those who love him tell him to consider retiring he will do well to heed their admonishments.
The problems Chocolatito has with super flyweights cannot be remedied with strategy or tactics or anything at all, save borrowing Juan Manuel Marquez’s personal trainer and supplements regimen, and since VADA shan’t smile upon that, it’s time for Chocolatito to call it a once-in-a-generation career and make his living doing something that is not prizefighting. Videos out of Nicaragua show Chocolatito’s dad and aunt hissing about managerial malfeasance and what illadvice moved Chocolatito from 112 pounds to 115 (and American television and American purses), but when ambulance videos from Carson get seen in Managua bygones should remain bygones at least till a retirement announcement comes.
Roman Gonzalez leaves behind a weightclass and sport very much better than he found it. He topped mythical status lists and an HBO broadcast without ever performing within 80 pounds of the average American male’s weight and bequeathed to his fellow tiny warriors an incredibly healthy ecosystem. Better, too, the decisiveness with which Sor Rungvisai removed him from the division; one retrospectively fears what might’ve come of Chocolatito’s health in an 18-month stretch that comprised a brutal rubber match with Sor Rungvisai and a title defense with Mexican Juan Estrada and a culminating decimation at the fists of Japan’s Naoya Inoue.
Those other two too plied their wares Saturday and promised many good things for aficionados and no good things for Chocolatito. HBO hasn’t the funds or impetus at the moment to unify heavier divisions with heavier purses, but Mexican Carlos Cuadras, who lost a fair and very close decision to Estrada in Saturday’s co-comain, would surely make a wonderful scrap with Inoue, and Estrada, who boxes with fantastic precision and class, would need every one of his wiles to relieve Sor Rungvisai of his belt. Such a card could not sell 10,000 pay-per-views but might sell 7,500 tickets in Carson and confirm HBO as the unlikely but enthusiastically welcomed new home for our beloved sport’s longsuffering aficionados.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry