By Bart Barry-
Editor’s note: Chocolatito City was a five-part series written in the doldrums of 2016.
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Saturday in Frisco, Texas, Nicaraguan Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez defeated Birmingham’s Khalid Yafai by ninthround knockout to snatch Yafai’s WBA super flyweight title surely as he snatched Yafai’s consciousness with a gorgeous 1-2 that might’ve been a 3-2, aiming as Chocolatito did for Yafai’s lead hand much as his head, then putting his cross, the 2, square on Yafai’s open chin. If it was the last great fight legend tells us remains within every great fighter, well, it was just that.
Evidently the reports of Chocolatito’s demise have been greatly exaggerated – even by sources esteemed as this one. Perhaps it was a misplaced desire to put a neat bookend on an era or to justify not-traveling a comparatively small distance to see a legend win another title fight, especially after traveling a lot farther to see him washed and folded in Carson, Calif.
Whatever it was it didn’t work, and worse yet, it caused a tempering of joy for what did work. While picking against Tyson Fury a couple weeks ago did nothing to detract from the emotion of watching him denude Deontay “Wardrobe Malfunction” Wilder, oddly writing disparagingly of Chocolatito’s comeback detracted from the experience of his prevailing in Frisco. As an underdog.
Somewhere it already must be written or said a reliable mark of greatness is winning a match as a betting underdog. The bookmakers know what they’re doing because all they’re doing is balancing a ledger, and selforganization of those who suspect themselves experts enough to wager zealously on a prizefight dictates their balanced ledger comprises wisdom. The chalk, as it’s known, is right far more often than boxing experts. And the chalk had Yafai a slight favorite.
The usefulness of the chalk in evaluating greatness is how infrequently the chalk gets fooled by prefight gimmickry; where socialmedia posts cost a few seconds and seek to game imagined popularity metrics a man who places a wager with a bookmaker has a financial incentive to ignore what promotional noise the rest of us feed on. Some of us bet $20 to enjoy a fight more, surely, but those sorts of bets don’t move the chalk.
Let’s treat Big Drama Show for a moment, here, as his case is proper illustrative. During his “historic” reign as middleweight champion, how often did Gennady Golovkin beat men favored to beat him?
Well, never, because, duh, everyone in the world was afraid of him so he had no choice but to fight little guys whom bookmakers knew had no chance of beating him!
What might’ve happened had he plied his wares against men who weighed 168 pounds rather than 148? The chalk would’ve reflected that, making Andre Ward, for instance, a comfortable favorite and likely making both BJ Saunders and Callum Smith narrow favorites, because the chalk knew Golovkin’s power wouldn’t travel, whatever the HBO hype machine screamed at us. Thus, had Golovkin dared to be great and challenged a super middleweight titlist during his prime and beaten someone oddsmakers favored over him, his legacy would be different from what it will be, no matter the outcomes of his subsequent matches with Canelo – whom historians will place 50 or so spots above him.
Did Chocolatito deserve to be an underdog Saturday? Yes. He got stopped right brutally 2 1/2 years ago by someone, Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, whom aficionados regard as excellent more than unbeatable. As Gallo Estrada showed us a year ago, a prime Chocolatito should not be iced by any version of Sor Rungvisai – hence the version of Chocolatito who did get stretched was not prime.
If at age 32 Chocolatito is not quite ancient for a former world minimumweight champion he is close, and he’s also matching himself, at 115 pounds, with men who absorb punches multiples better than 105-pounders do because, as we know, fighters gain weight on their chins more than their fists. Some of what happened Saturday, too, was about styles.
Power punchers like Sor Rungvisai, who get foiled often by defensive specialists, treat volume guys like Chocolatito much as a threshing machine treats dry husks, while volume guys like Chocolatito tend to overwhelm stylists like Yafai – which is why Sor Rungvisai’s decision to box with a stylist like Estrada wasn’t wrongheaded as reported and neither was Yafai’s decision to switch from cutiepie to enforcer when matched with a volume-punching genius (whom he was never going to dissuade with defensive precision).
Wait, but BK and Latin Snake told us a hundred times each . . . Yes, yes, I know – Yafai is a former Olympian who foolishly abandoned the strategy they scripted for him. Well, guess what, guys, if Gallo Estrada couldn’t foil Chocolatito with a jab, there’s no chance in this iteration of the universe or the next Yafai could, and to Yafai’s credit, he got that almost instantly and did what he calculated, as a former Olympian, gave him the best chance.
Because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it was wrong; Chocolatito in his prime, at, say, 108 pounds, cut guys like Yafai in half in five rounds; seven pounds and seven years beyond his prime, it turns out, Chocolatito still has enough to raze guys like Yafai in nine rounds. Yafai might have boxed his way to a dull and lopsided-decision loss to Chocolatito. Instead he made an entertaining gamble on his own size and strength. He lost his title but gave us an unforgettable experience.
I’ll take more of that, please.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
