Los Angeles, CA (February 16, 2018) Former world champion and #1 ranked mandatory challenger JUAN FRANCISCO ‘El Gallo” ESTRADA, (36-2-0, 25 KO’s), closed his Hermosillo, Mexico training camp in style on Friday afternoon with a final sparring session in front of a huge crowd of local media and supporters. Estrada will challenge WBC Super Flyweight World Champion SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI, (43-4-1, 39 KO’s), in the 12-round headliner at the highly anticipated SUPERFLY 2 event set for Saturday, February 24, 2018 at the ‘Fabulous’ Forum and televised live on HBO Boxing After Dark® beginning at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT.

“I’m ready for The Champ, this has been a tremendous camp with great sparring, “ said Estrada who was accompanied by his trainer ALFREDO CABALLERO. “It’s great to be here in front of the media and my supporters, many of whom are coming to the fight.”

“As soon as I was offered the fight I accepted, it’s a great opportunity to become a world champion again and to honor Mexico.”

“I know how good Sor Rungvisai is from his last two fights with Roman Gonzalez, he’s very strong but I have the skills to defeat him. “

“The whole country of Mexico and boxing fans all over the world will be watching SUPERFLY 2 and I look forward to putting on a spectacular performance for them.”

Photos/Team Estrada

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SUPERFLY 2 is headlined by WBC Super Flyweight World Champion SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI, (43-4-1, 39 KO’s), of Si Sa Ket, Thailand, defending his title over 12-rounds for the second time against former world champion and #1 ranked mandatory challenger JUAN FRANCISCO “El Gallo” ESTRADA, (36-2, 25 KO’s), of Sonora, Mexico. The event will be televised live on HBO Boxing After Dark® beginning at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT. The bout is also being contested for the vacant RING Magazine title.

Co-featured on the HBO Boxing After Dark telecast, former WBC Super Flyweight World Champion, CARLOS ‘Principe’ CUADRAS, (36-2-1, 27 KO’s), of Mexico City, MX faces hard-hitting, two-time world title challenger MC WILLIAMS ARROYO, (16-3, 14 KO’s), of Fajardo, Puerto Rico in an outstanding ten round super flyweight clash.

Opening the telecast, the Fighting Pride of the Philippines and three-time world champion DONNIE NIETES, (40-1-4, 22 KO’s) will make the first defense of his IBF Flyweight World Title over 12-rounds against two-time world champion and mandatory challenger JUAN CARLOS REVECO, (39-3-0, 19 KO’s) from Las Heras, Argentina.

Headlining the non-televised portion of the event, four-time world champion in two divisions and #2 ranked BRIAN “The Hawaiian Punch” VILORIA, (38-5, 22 KO’s) of Los Angeles, CA via Waipahu, Hawaii will challenge undefeated and #1 ranked ARTEM DALAKIAN, (15-0, 11 KO’s), of Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine in a scheduled 12-round bout for the vacant WBA Flyweight World Title.

Tickets for SUPERFLY 2, priced at $250, $150, $100, $60 and $30 are now on sale and can be purchased through Ticketmaster (Ticketmaster.com, 1-800-745-3000) and the Forum Box Office. The Forum is located at 3900 W. Manchester Blvd, Inglewood CA 90305. Doors will open at 3:30 p.m. on the night of the event.

SUPERFLY 2 is presented by Tom Loeffler’s 360 Promotions in association with Nakornluong Promotions and Zanfer Promotions. Cuadras vs. Arroyo is presented in association with Promociones del Pueblo and PR Best Boxing. Nietes vs. Reveco is presented in association with ALA Promotions. Viloria vs. Dalakian is presented in association with Teiken Promotions.

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According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, Former four-division world champion Roman Gonzalez plans to return this Spring following his two losses to Srisaket Sor Rungvisal last year.

“Roman is definitely planning to fight in April or May,” Carlos Blandon, Gonzalez’s manager, told ESPN on Tuesday. Blandon said that Gonzalez plans to remain at junior bantamweight, resisting suggestions from some that he return to the flyweight division.

“Roman wants to keep fighting [at junior bantamweight] until he dominates the division and then maybe we will think of an additional title in the following weight division [bantamweight],” Blandon said. “God will tell. Roman and his new team are ready to kick off the new year.”

By Bart Barry-

Editor’s note: For part 1, please click here.

*

What a younger Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez might’ve done with a smaller version of Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek, would’ve done, one writes with near certainty, is whack him low, block his early shots then begin spinning him dizzy, making him miss then pivotwalking him into whatever Chocolatito wished throw his way from whatever angle Chocolatito wished throw it, and after Sor Rungvisai collapsed from concussion and exhaustion Chocolatito’d’ve helped him off the canvas onto his stool.

A lesson Santa Monica teaches on a Sunday morning, festive and bright, and a Sunday evening, dark and unfriendlier and a touch despairing, is the atmosphere of a place – its energy or mood or spirit or vibrations or aura or nature or God or light or luck, synonyms likely all – colors reflexively its every inhabitant, no matter how decisively he draws his state of mind and emotion from within: The palpable sense of forward-regret I’ve felt every Sunday evening since grammar school, I realized on Santa Monica Pier, is not mine but a reflection of everyone else’s.

Sor Rungvisai showed no regard whatever for Chocolatito in round 1 and instead trusted the physics of championship prizefighting.

Doug Fischer happened over to say hello sometime during the undercard, and his headwear and demeanor reminded me of Digital Underground’s Shock G, and I told him so (and he replied immediately with a quip about StubHub Center’s generous tailgaters turning him into Humpty Hump) because I knew he’d get the reference and moreso because I was so happy to see him because Doug is one of the most genuine and decent men I’ve met anywhere, and seeing him ringside immediately returns me everytime to 2004 and my Max Boxing subscription and watching Doug and Steve Kim’s weekly show, wondering what it might be like to cover boxing.

For reasons of character (orgullo y ambición) and culture and luck Chocolatito hadn’t a choice but to fight often and ascend weightclasses steadily, and such an ascent, when done honestly, sans handicapping and cherrypicking, brings an inevitable reckoning with physics (their fists be larger than your chin) or time (you haven’t the proper reflexes anymore for hair’s breadth escapes) or both (damn it! this hurts and there’s nothing I can do about it), and while there’s a good chance such a reckoning was exactly what Chocolatito sought there’s also a chance Chocolatito did not quite believe such a reckoning possible.

My September, weighted by legal woes, caused me to keep a halfhourly tally of my thoughts and emotions (thoughts caused, as ever, by emotions), a tally that made me acutely aware of the Santa Monica Pier’s benevolent effect on what vigilance I applied the task of equanimity towards a situation that anyway resolved itself amicably by October.

There’s no such thing as a wholly objective scorecard unless its scorekeeper keeps his eyes ever fixed on the middle plane between the fighters, diverting his gaze to one fighter or the other only when following a punch that pierces that plane, which no scorekeeper does, but years of thinking about such a feat at least led me to an improved awareness of what fighter I favor by watching, and that fighter has been Chocolatito in every minute of his every fight (right up until Sor Rungvisai’s absurd victory somersault after Chocolatito was razed).

Sitting one row in front of me and kind enough to turn and introduce himself was the young and talented writer Sean Nam, and when our fun and winding conversation wound its way to his friend and mentor, Carlos Acevedo, I was pleased to hear myself saying something like this: In the hierarchy of this boxing-writing thing, there is Carlos and everyone else, and the distance between Carlos and everyone else is not small, which is another way of saying: While there are plenty of boxing writers whose work I admire, Carlos’ is the only writing I consistently read and think “I don’t believe I could do this”.

Once he regained his consciousness then his feet Chocolatito wanted to leave the StubHub Center’s ring rapidly as possible but the WBC, whose superflyweight title Sor Rungvisai took from Chocolatito in March and emphatically did not return in September, had to bestow on Chocolatito a finisher medal of some sort, a runner-up trophy for a twoman contest, and Chocolatito wanted no part of it, hanging the souvenir round his knuckles not his neck as he snapped through the ropes and the hell out of the ring.

As early Saturday afternoon included a trip to architect Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall (a familiar to his historic Guggenheim design in Bilbao, Spain, though in stainless steel skin, not titanium) and brunch at the fabulous Redbird, and Sunday afternoon included a trip to The Getty, whose grounds were far greater than their collection, it was not lost on me how much more time I spent on Santa Monica’s gaudy pier than among works of artistic or architectural grandeur, which marks either an inversion of maturity or its transcendence.

The atmosphere at ringside was subdued unto funereal after the main event, as nearly no one traveled from Thailand to see Sor Rungvisai, and the partisan-Nicaraguan crowd that filled the StubHub bowl was already mourning its experience collectively, which made it easy to miss the scale of Sor Rungvisai’s achievement, which later made end-of-year recollections like Jimmy Tobin’s so insightful and satisfying to read.

There was a time I thought often about experience and legacy and decorated a small office with ringside credentials and submitted my work to annual writing contests, but changing life conditions did away with all that three or four years ago, and a halfdozen annual boxing trips, too, and now I realize I was wrong to do away with the boxing trips.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

By Jimmy Tobin-

He was the opponent that night in March, if not quite in the derogatory sense, where matchmaking calculus eliminates a fighter’s prospects in advance, then at least in terms of billing. He was supposed to fall, by knockout ideally, to play his role in a narrative no less true for it being dressed in the bombast of a network’s company men. But he left the ring a champion.

When super flyweight Srisaket Sor Rungvisai won a majority decision over Roman Gonzalez at Madison Square Garden he did more than play an earnest part in a fight near perfect in its brutality. More? Remarkably, yes, though we should stay there with the sweat, the blood, the attrition for a minute, no?

Unlike any number of Gonzalez’ previous opponents, who found themselves trapped in the line of fire against the finest offensive fighter in the sport, Rungvisai stood irreverently at arms reach. Bolstered by a size advantage that thwarted Gonzalez time and again, and what seemed a fortifying concoction of ignorance and disregard for the man before him, Sor Rungvisai welcomed the fight Gonzalez promised like no opponent has. He brought foul after disruptive foul, drawing first blood via a headbutt and doggedly persisting in his rough work until the seemingly unflappable Gonzalez looked tellingly to the referee for order.

And we should thank him for his belligerence. Because what he demanded of Gonzalez that night was nothing short of self-immolation. And Gonzalez responded. To watch “Chocolatito” in those championship rounds, drained of his blood from headbutts, his zest leaking out with it, chopping his blade dull against a man he could not fell, was to witness the type of performance only great fighters can manage—and even then only once or twice. Sor Rungvisai’s appreciation for that assault, his finding even some joy in all that leather, was awe-inspiring. Gonzalez was his greatest that March night; Sor Rungvisai was the reason he had to be.

Not to be lost in the debate about who deserved to win is the reality that Sor Rungvisai fought a great fighter on near even terms, and that barring some absurd veneration of the undefeated record, what the fighters produced that night trumped easily any assessment of that action by the judges. We do not watch (and rewatch) fights simply to see who wins—we watch to marvel at the journey to that result. The outcome is always secondary to the violence that produced it.

He was the opponent that night in September too, if only until the man he defeated six months prior began his ring walk wearing an uncharacteristically grim visage; until the thirteenth round between them started with the irreverence of the first, and the sixteenth ended unforgettably.

When Srisaket Sor Rungvisai augered Roman Gonzalez into the canvas in the fourth round of their rematch at StubHub Center in Carson, California, he ratified not only his career but that too of Gonzalez, who ended up where his ambition would inevitably lead him—at a point absent of questions either unasked or unanswered. What more could be asked of Sor Rungvisai, for that matter? Come September, the sabers that rattled in protest of the decision in March were as silent as Gonzalez on the canvas. Sor Rungvisai was twice the underdog against Gonzalez and twice emerged with victories. Surely fighters have bucked the odds this way before, but how many of them did so against a fighter like Gonzalez? Were the two to fight again, Sor Rungvisai would be the clear favorite—and the reasons for those odds are why Gonzalez is unlikely to ever consummate the trilogy.

HBO was validated that night as well, if not in the way they intended. And they took note too. In a span of eleven months, Sor Rungvisai will go from twice facing Gonzalez to fighting Juan Francisco Estrada, who, until this year, had given Gonzalez his sternest test, with all three fights televised by HBO.

For too long the pattern has been in place: fighter X is maneuvered by various means into HBO’s interest, he wins a showcase fight or two on the network, is dramatized into a protagonist, and then matched according to the outcome of a script, one that mostly preserves his image lest HBO itself encourage the idea that anything but the best be invited on its airwaves. But that pattern never manifested with Gonzalez, and that is, in part, because what Gonzalez found in Sor Rungvisai was not an opponent, but a nemesis. Which is why it feels near impossible to write about Sor Rungvisai without not only referencing but praising, Gonzalez, ensuring that Sor Rungvisai will forever receive his due. The intimacy of their fights is reflected in how inextricably they are linked: it was Sor Rungvisai that showed Gonzalez where his ambition left his ability behind, and Gonzalez who demanded Sor Rungvisai’s arrival on the world stage be something remarkable. Remarkable, it was.

It is awards season in our sport, an undertaking that often seems more about those who bestow such honors than those who (in most cases, unknowingly) receive them. Admittedly, such a curation extends beyond the interest of this column, which is guilty of consuming rather selfishly (and only conveniently) what violent fare the sport may offer and forgetting much of it soon thereafter. But the year Sor Rungvisai had casts a shadow over the entire sport, it looms as the year’s benchmark for achievement, and more importantly, as a reason to keep watching. So gift him whatever awards you like, if only as a token of appreciation that falls so very short of what he gave us.

It’s a holiday treat for HBO Boxing fans. Over four consecutive nights in late December, HBO will present seven of the year’s standout fights, spotlighting some of the biggest names in the sport. Featured are signature wins by Anthony Joshua, Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, Sadam Ali and Andre Ward plus the high-stakes middleweight showdown last September between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin that was judged a draw before a capacity crowd at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Starting Tuesday, Dec. 26, HBO will replay seven major league showdowns from this year sprinkled over four consecutive nights. All the fights will also be available on HBO NOW, HBO GO®, HBO On Demand® and affiliate portals.

The “Boxing’s Best” lineup includes:

Tuesday, December 26 Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin &

11:00 p.m. ET/PT Orlando Salido vs. Miguel Roman

Wednesday, December 27 Roman Gonzalez vs. Srisaket Sor Rungvisai I

11:30 p.m. ET/PT & Miguel Cotto vs. Sadam Ali

Thursday, December 28 David Lemieux vs. Curtis Stevens &

11:00 p.m. ET/PT Andre Ward vs. Sergey Kovalev 2

Friday, December 29 Anthony Joshua vs. Wladimir Klitschko

11:00 p.m. ET/PT

Los Angeles, CA (December 7, 2017) Following the overwhelming success from the first SUPERFLY event this past September, Tom Loeffler’s 360 Promotions in association with Nakornluong Promotions and Zanfer Promotions is proud to announce the highly anticipated second installment, SUPERFLY 2, set for Saturday, February 24 at the Forum in Los Angeles, CA televised live on HBO Boxing After Dark beginning at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT.

SUPERFLY 2 will be headlined by WBC Super Flyweight World Champion SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI, (43-4-1, 39 KO’s), of Si Sa Ket, Thailand, defending his title over 12-rounds for the second time against former world champion and #1 ranked mandatory challenger JUAN FRANCISCO “El Gallo” ESTRADA, (36-2, 25 KO’s), of Sonora, Mexico.

Advance tickets for SUPERFLY 2, priced at $250, $150, $100, $60 and $30 will go On-Sale Tuesday, December 12 at 12:00 p.m. PT and can be purchased through Ticketmaster (Ticketmaster.com, 1-800-745-3000) and the Forum Box Office. The Forum is located at 3900 W. Manchester Blvd, Inglewood CA 90305.

“It’s very exciting to announce the main event for the second installment of our SUPERFLY series. With the tremendous response from fans and media from our first event and overwhelming anticipation to our second, we join boxing fans in saying that we ‘can’t wait’ until February 24 at the Forum,” said Loeffler.

“Srisaket Sor Rungvisai had a remarkable year in 2017 upsetting ‘Chocolatito’ by controversial decision on March 18, 2017 at Madison Square Garden for the WBC Super Flyweight Title and decisively defeating him again in his first defense on September 9 at the Stubhub Center at our first SUPERFLY event.”

“Juan Francisco Estrada won a terrific fight against Carlos Cuadras on September 9 at the Stubhub Center and is very anxious to challenge for a world title in the super flyweight division against Sor Rungvisai.”

“The Forum has played host to many nights of memorable battles for more than 40 years and we expect this event to be another chapter in the annals of this iconic venue.”

Said Fernando Beltran, President of Zanfer Promotions, “On February 24 our talented and pride of Mexico, Juan Francisco “Gallo” Estrada will show that he is the best flyweight in the world by beating the WBC Champion Srisaket Sor Rungvisai in another great night at SUPERFLY 2.”

“HBO has given us a great opportunity to showcase the smaller divisions and the fans will be very happy to see it. If SUPERFLY 1 was a great night of quality boxing and action, I am sure that SUPERFLY 2 will surpass it.”

Mauricio Sulaiman of the World Boxing Council stated, “SUPERFLY 2 must be celebrated as it will bring excitement to boxing fans and it marks the return of real boxing promotion as this concept has found great interest around the world. It is great to see that the smaller weight divisions receive this type of opportunities to shine on the biggest stage of the world for boxing. The WBC fully supports SUPERFLY 2 and looks forward to this spectacular night of boxing.”

Said Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, “The super flyweight division is the deepest division in the world at the moment. I have great respect to Tom Loeffler and HBO for making SUPERFLY so successful, and SUPERFLY 2 will continue to deliver. We have so many great fighters in the super flyweight division, and it is exciting for me because there are many world class opponents that can make terrific fights.”

“Juan Francisco Estrada is definitely among the top-class fighters in our division. When someone is a former unified champion that moved up without losing his titles, you know he is a world class fighter in his prime. However, I am confident that I will be successful in this fight because I will be at my best on fight night again. We will give the fans an incredible fight and I plan on another impressive win.”

“I would like to invite all Thais in the United States, especially those in Los Angeles to attend my fight at the Forum on February 24. Together our Thai hearts will beat and our Thai blood will be pumped with pride and excitement. Let’s show the world our Thai power together on that day!”

Said Estrada, “I am very excited about facing Sor Rungvisai for the WBC Super Flyweight World Title on February 24 at the Forum. He will be a difficult challenge as he defeated Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez twice in a row with a vicious KO in their last fight. Sor Rungvisai is a very tough and skilled boxer so I will have to prepare very well to be ready to challenge him for his belt.”

The 30-year-old Sor Rungvisai made his United States debut on March 18 shocking the boxing world with a 12-round majority decision over then undefeated and consensus #1 pound-for-pound fighter Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez at Madison Square Garden. Dropping Gonzalez in the first stanza, Sor Rungvisai would capture the WBC Super Flyweight World Title in a hotly contested battle that had the massive crowd on their feet throughout.

Rematching Gonzalez on September 9 at The Stubhub Center, Sor Rungvisai would drop the four-division world champion twice in the fourth round, the second resulting in Sor Rungvisai being awarded the knockout stoppage erasing any controversy from the first fight.

Sor Rungvisai also previously held the WBC Super Flyweight World Title defending it once before losing the title to Carlos Cuadras on a technical decision on May 31, 2014. Sor Rungvisai had won the title in his hometown of Si Sa Ket, Thailand on May 3, 2013 by knocking out champion Yota Sato in the eighth round.

Known for his true ‘Mexican Style’ of fighting, Juan Francisco Estrada has remained one of the most popular fighters in the flyweight and super flyweight divisions throughout his nine-year professional career.

The 27-year-old Estrada won the WBC and WBA Flyweight World Titles on April 6, 2013 with a 12-round decision victory over Brian Viloria in Macau, China. Estrada defended both titles six times before moving up to the super flyweight division.

At the inaugural Superfly event on September 9, Estrada fought brilliantly in winning a 12-round unanimous decision over former WBC Super Flyweight World Champion Carlos Cuadras at the Stubhub Center.

Estrada has not lost a fight in over six years. On November 17, 2012, he challenged then WBC Flyweight World Champion Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez, losing a very close, 12-round decision at the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

Additional information on this tremendous night of world class professional boxing will be announced shortly.

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After the success of last September’s Superfly card, a squeal card is being planned for February 24th in Los Angeles that will feature Srisaket Sor Rungvisai taking on Juan Francisco Estrada for the WBC belt, according to Dan Rafael of espn.com.

“It’s very exciting to announce the main event for the second installment of our ‘Superfly’ series,” promoter Tom Loeffler said, adding that the HBO telecast also will include two other bouts in the loaded 115-pound weight class. “With the tremendous response from fans and media from our first event and overwhelming anticipation to our second, we join boxing fans in saying that we can’t wait until Feb. 24 at The Fabulous Forum.”

“The super flyweight division is the deepest division in the world at the moment,” Sor Rungvisai said. “I have great respect to Tom Loeffler and HBO for making ‘Superfly’ so successful, and ‘Superfly 2’ will continue to deliver. We have so many great fighters in the super flyweight division, and it is exciting for me because there are many world-class opponents that can make terrific fights.

“Juan Francisco Estrada is definitely among the top-class fighters in our division. When someone is a former unified champion that moved up without losing his titles, you know he is a world-class fighter in his prime. However, I am confident that I will be successful in this fight because I will be at my best on fight night again. We will give the fans an incredible fight and I plan on another impressive win. I would like to invite all Thais in the United States, especially those in Los Angeles, to attend my fight. Together our Thai hearts will beat and our Thai blood will be pumped with pride and excitement.”

“Srisaket Sor Rungvisai had a remarkable year in 2017, upsetting ‘Chocolatito’ and defeating him again in his first defense at our first ‘Superfly’ event,” Loeffler said. “Juan Francisco Estrada won a terrific fight against Carlos Cuadras on Sept. 9 at the StubHub Center and is very anxious to challenge for a world title against Sor Rungvisai.”

“I am very excited about facing Sor Rungvisai,” Estrada said. “He will be a difficult challenge, as he defeated Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez twice in a row with a vicious KO in their last fight. Sor Rungvisai is a very tough and skilled boxer, so I will have to prepare very well to be ready to challenge him for his belt.”

The other bouts on the card have not been finalized, but Loeffler said Gonzalez will not be part of the show. However, Japanese star Naoya “Monster” Inoue (14-0, 12 KOs), 24, who made an impressive debut in the United States by knocking out Antonio Nieves in the sixth round to retain his 115-pound belt on the “Superfly” card, will be back to face an opponent to be determined, as long as he comes through a title defense against France’s Yoan Boyeaux (41-4, 26 KOs) on Dec. 30 in Yokohama, Japan.

Loeffler said other fighters who could appear on “Superfly 2” include Mexico’s Cuadras (36-2-1, 27 KOs) and world titleholder Khalid Yafai (23-0, 14 KOs) of England.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, in the main event of HBO’s super flyweight tripleheader from StubHub Center in Carson, California, Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek augured Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez into the canvas with a right hook so ill-intentioned and unsparing as to make superfluous the ritual tallying of seconds and scores alike. A third fight between Gonzalez’ and his conqueror became superfluous too in the long minutes between Gonzalez’ departure and return to consciousness. Even boxing’s most ambitious man is likely to appreciate the options that reroute him from another opportunity to settle a now lopsided score.

To be sure, Sor Rungvisai would hesitate not at all to share the ring a third time with what was, even a week ago, arguably boxing’s finest practitioner. For he is now Gonzalez’ fighting superior; and while this superiority he owes primarily to his size, vitality, power (attributes one must lobby hard to take credit for) there is more to him than physicality—Gonzalez, of course, has been beating bigger men for years.

What Sor Rungvisai brought was an irreverence both inherent and inherited: he forced an ugly fight with Gonzalez the first time, and having watched the scale of suffering tilt in his favor, set upon Gonzalez with greater fervor the second. After all, Sor Rungvisai too was fighting for vengeance, fighting to silence those who discredited his victory in March, and his performance reflected as much. He did not just dare the greatest offensive fighter of recent years to fight him, Sor Rungvisai demanded it, believing belligerence the key to victory.

And he was right, hence the smirk on Sor Rungvisai’s face when Gonzalez implored referee Tom Taylor to police the headbutts that again figured in the action. This plea told Sor Rungvisai there were questions his opponent could not answer—so he posed them mercilessly and relentlessly and boldly and ushered the Nicaraguan to his undoing. He is deserving then, of the accolades that should attend that unforgettable end.

Could it also be that Gonzalez suffered the fate that he deserved? Consider the bitterness of his first loss to Sor Rungvisai, the frustration born of scorecards, of an outcome taken out of the hands most deserving of delivering it. Consider too, Gonzalez’ understanding of the intimacy of the knockout, for the uncorrupted truth it reveals, that responsibility free of blame—might not a definitive ending then, however chilling, prove more satisfying to him?

Stretched on his back, looking skyward, Gonzalez was shown his ceiling as a fighter, and there is some nobility in that. Sor Rungvisai represented the culmination of a career of staggering ambition: Gonzalez was not finessed onto HBO and fed an army of no-hopers while a makeshift narrative about his greatness was conjured out of mediocrity—he is the genuine article, immune to the red hot revisions aimed to incinerate legacies in the aftermath of defeat. A middling end was never Gonzalez’ fate: the very nature of his career prevented it. He has now lost consecutive fights, yes, but there are no bad losses on his ledger, nor will there be any, given how undeniably Gonzalez has slipped. The signs were there before Sor Rungvisai, and after Sor Rungvisai expectations and evaluations will be forgiving. You are allowed to age when you leave no challenge unmet—and it is respect, not courtesy, that dictates as much.

Yet even if it is too early to eulogize Gonzalez’ career, he looked like no better than the fifth best fighter on the card, which means the division likely moves on without him or at his expense. But it will not do so in anonymity, and for that, Gonzalez deserves much credit. He, along with K2 Promotions, not only prompted the return of the flyweights to HBO’s airwaves he justified it. Yes, HBO now has an army of dragons guarding its gold, and the departure of Top Rank could be a sign that boxing at least as longtime subscribers have come to expect it is not long for the network. But the response to Superfly was strong, the arena sold out, and the action as good as anything HBO has offered in some time.

These are reasons then, to invest in the lower weights, and any pairing of the best of the card’s fighters (Juan Francisco Estrada, Carlos Cuadras, Naoya Inoue and of course, Sor Rungvisai) will meet the lofty expectations Saturday set. HBO may not care to bankroll as obvious a tournament as they could make, not when their stars have opponents comeback, showcase, and stay-busy alike to pay, but it is nearly impossible to imagine them not capitalizing on the very real enthusiasm Gonzalez engendered. And there is an important lesson to be gleaned from that: his career, conducted as if in adherence to a fighting romantic ideal, will leave both Gonzalez and boxing for the better. That so few are prepared to follow his lead only makes that message more endearing.

All of that time Saturday, from the ring to the gurney, the ambulance to the hospital, and yet so few what-ifs to ponder. When people ask him what happened that night in Carson Gonzalez should find some peace in saying, “A better man.” And he should one day, and hopefully, one day soon, say it with a smile.

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

Srisaket Sor Rungvisai retained the WBC Super Flyweight title with a 4th round knockout over Roman Gonzalez at The StubHub Center in Carson, California.

Rungvisai consistently beat Gonzalez to the punch when the two stood toe-to-toe in the center of the ring.  Gonzalez looked a bit slower then in recent fights, where he was considered pound for pound the best fighter in the world.

In round four, Rungvisai landed a right hook that sent Gonzalez to the deck.  Gonzalez seemed to steady himself only to eat another right hook that sent him plummeting to  the canvas, and the fight was immediately stopped at 1:18.

Runvisai, 115 lbs of Si Sa Ket, THA is now 44-4-1 with 40 knockouts.  Gonzalez, 114.8 lbs of Managua, NIC is

Nayoya Inoue made an impressive American debut by stopping Antonio Nieves after round six to retain the WBO Super Flyweight title.46-2-1.

Inoue was dominant, and in round five, he landed a vicious left hook to the body that sent Nieves to the canvas.  Inoue continued to pound Nieves, and after round six, Nieves’ corner mercifully stopped the bout.

Inoue, 115 lbs of Yokohama, JAP is now 14-0 with 12 knockouts.  Nives, 113.8 lbs of Cleveland, OH is 17-2-2.

Juan Francisco Estrada won a 12-round unanimous decision over Carlos Cuadras in a battle of former world champions.

Cuadras came out boxing and controlled the early rounds.  the fight started to turn in round six, as he started to land hard power shots that rocked Cuadras.

In round two, Estrada landed a perfect straight right that sent Cuadras to the canvas.  Estrada came on late to take the late rounds and come from behind to win on all cards by 114-113 scores.

Estrada, 114.8 lbs of Puerto Penasco, Mexico is now 36-2.  Cuadras, 114.6 lbs of Mexico City is 36-2-1.

Follow all the action as Srisaket Sor Rungvisai defends the WBC Super Flyweight title in a highly anticipated rematch with 4-division champion Roman Gonzalez.  The action kicks off at 10:15 ET / 7:15 PT / 9:15 am Sunday in Thailand and 8:15 PM in Managua with a two fight undercard as Naoua Inoue defends the WBO Super Flyweight title against Antonio Nieves and Carlos Cuadras takes on Juan Francisco Estrada in an All-Mexican Super Flyweight showdown.

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Round 1: Accidental headbutt/no cuts…Straight left from Rungvisai

Round 2 Gonzalez being aggressive…combinatons..Good right…

Round 3  Tremendous toe to toe action..Hard right from Gonzalez…hard left from Rungvisai..

Round 4 Body work from Rungvisai…HARD RIGHT HOOK AND DOWN GOES GONZALEZ…HARD RIGHT AND DOWN GOES GONZALEZ AGAIN…HE IS KNOCKED OUT

Round 1: Jab-right hand from Inoue…1-2…Hard 3 punch combination..Hard left from Nieves..Body shot from Inoue..

Round 2 Right from Nieves to the body..right…Jab from Inoue..2 body shots..Body shots from Nieves..Body shot from Inoue..Right..left to body..combination

Round 3 Uppercut from Inoue..Body shots..3 punch combination

Round 4  Inoue lands a left to the body..another one..

Round 5:  LEFT TO THE BODY AND DOWN GOES NIEVES..Hard left hooks

Round 6:  good right from Inoue..Left hooks to the body..Right and left to the head..Vicious right...FIGHT STOPPED AFTER THE ROUND

Round 1: Body work from Cuadras

Round 2 Combination from Cuadras…Counter right from Estrada

Round 3 Left hook from Cuadras…Jab..Combination..1-2…Left hook from Estrada..Left hook

Round 4 2 left hook from Cuadras…

Round 5 Hard uppercut from Estrada..Counter right from Cuadras…Left hook..Good left hook from Estrada..Right..Body shots and left hook from Cuadras..

Round 6 Hard jab from Estrada..Hard 1-2..Right..left hook..Big right from Cuadras..Big right from Estrada..

Round 7 Hard right from Estrada..Hard flush right..Uppercut from Cuadras..Good right

Round 8 Straight right and jab..left hook to body from Estrada..Right from Cuadras..Good body shots…Good right from Estrada..

Round 9 Uppercut from Cudras..Good right…combination and right hand…

Round 10 Hard right from Estrada..HARD RIGHT AND DOWN GOES CUADRAS..2 Hard right hands…Right…Cuadras lands a lopping right

Round 11 Good left hook from Estrada..Body shot from Cuadras..Good left from Estrada..Left hook from Cuadras..Left hook inside for Estrada..Big left hook..

Round 12: Good right from Estrada..Big left hook..Combination from Cuadras…Hard right over the ropes from Estrada..Left hook from Cuadras…

114-113 on ALL CARDS FOR  JUAN FRANCISCO ESTRADA

HBO BOXING AFTER DARK presents a must-see tripleheader featuring the four top-ranked super flyweights in the world when HBO BOXING AFTER DARK: SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI VS. ROMAN “CHOCOLATITO” GONZALEZ AND NAOYA INOUE VS. ANTONIO NIEVES AND CARLOS CUADRAS VS. JUAN FRANCISCO ESTRADA is seen SATURDAY, SEPT. 9 at 10:15 p.m. (ET/PT) from StubHub Center in Carson, Cal. The HBO Sports team will call all the action, which will be available in HDTV, closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired and presented in Spanish on HBO Latino.

The fights will also be available on HBO NOW, HBO GO, HBO On Demand and affiliate portals.

The main event features the sport’s most anticipated rematch when Thailand’s Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (43-4-1, 39 KOs) defends his super flyweight title against Nicaragua’s Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez (46-1, 38 KOs) in a scheduled 12-round bout. The two 30-year-old ring warriors are set to wage war again just six months after their thrilling back-and-forth fight at Madison Square Garden, which resulted in the title changing hands and Gonzalez losing his undefeated record via a controversial majority decision. Sor Rungvisai used his unconventional southpaw style to capture his first world title and now hopes to defend it successfully in just his second U.S. fight, while former four-division champion Gonzalez seeks to avenge his first pro defeat in his sixth HBO appearance.

In the co-main event, Naoya Inoue (13-0, 11 KOs) of Yokohama, Japan, defends his share of the super flyweight title against Cleveland’s Antonio Nieves (17-1-2, 9 KOs) in scheduled 12-round bout. Inoue, 24, makes his U.S. debut following a fast start to his pro career, having captured a world title in just his sixth professional fight and successfully defended his super flyweight title five times. Nieves, 30, is making his first bid for a world title and looks to disrupt Inoue’s campaign in the 115-pound division.

In the opening bout, former world champions from Mexico square off when Carlos Cuadras (36-1-1, 27 KOs) of Mexico City takes on Juan Francisco Estrada (35-2, 25 KOs) of Sonora in a scheduled 12-round super flyweight contest. Cuadras, 28, and Estrada, 27, have both lost to Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, and are seeking a shot at a piece of the super flyweight title.

Immediately following the live boxing action, HBO Sports presents the second episode of 24/7 Canelo-Golovkin, which previews the September 16 pay-per-view mega fight matchup. (Click here to Watch Episode 1)

Follow HBO boxing news at hbo.com/boxing, on Facebook at facebook.com/hboboxing and on Twitter at twitter.com/hboboxing.

All HBO boxing events are presented in HDTV. HBO viewers must have access to the HBO HDTV channel to watch HBO programming in high definition.

The executive producer of HBO BOXING AFTER DARK is Rick Bernstein; producer, Thomas Odelfelt; director, Johnathan Evans.

® HBO BOXING AFTER DARK is a registered service mark of Home Box Office, Inc.

By Bart Barry-

Nicaraguan super flyweight Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez seeks to avenge his career’s first loss against Thailand’s Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek in the main event of this Saturday’s extraordinary “Superfly” card in Carson, Calif., a card HBO will broadcast and in so doing stake an unlikely and indisputable claim to 2017’s best boxing broadcast. The comain will have Japan’s Naoya “The Monster” Inoue making his first match in the U.S. And the co-comain will have yet another 115-pound man, Mexican Carlos “Principe” Cuadras, whose claim as the world’s best super flyweight is not an unreasonable one, making combat with countryman Juan Francisco Estrada.

Frankly it’s an honor to cover a card of this quality. A quick query to the memory brings back a nullset of a better constructed threematch finale to a card I’ve attended – though Barrera-Juarez II in 2006 comes tumbling forward on the virtue of what Israel Vazquez did to Jhonny Gonzalez in the co-comain (while Marco Antonio Barrera bemused Rocky Juarez too thoroughly in the main to make the card actually historic, despite its fine construction).

Most importantly it could be the last chance to see a historic prizefighter like Chocolatito in the mainevent of a consequential card. Whatever happens Saturday Chocolatito is unlikely to retire and stay retired, a more likely occurrence is that long past the viable economics of the act Chocolatito’ll continue to work for backwages in a futile bid to do things the Money way, and he’s too good and decent for that to be a thing worth traveling to Los Angeles or Managua to witness.

The march upwards in weightclass and age is too much for any man to endure flawlessly much past his 40th fight or 30th year if he weighs less than 120 pounds, and in March Sor Rungvisai played reminder of this much as its cause. Chocolatito did more to accomplish less against Sor Rungvisai than any Sor Rungvisai predecessor and being reminded of it exhausted Gonzalez till the ratio trebled but still Chocolatito spun and whacked and resisted what disbelief surely came thumping. If there were special preparations Sor Rungvisai made for Chocolatito he did not betray them; perhaps his fruitfullest tactic was treating a legend like a shortnotice swingbout replacement to be butted and beaten as whim bade.

Whatever the weighting supposedly be, a good metric for ring generalship, that squirrely criterion with which we justify our biases when scoring rounds that’re close, is: Who files first appeal to the referee? who petitions an official’s intervention in lieu of making justice with his proper fists?

In March it was Chocolatito and an unfailingly bad sign. If Sor Rungvisai’s heady comportment was less than purely sporting Chocolatito’s conduct was more worrisome. Great fighters are dirty fighters and Chocolatito is a great fighter by this measure and every other but in March Chocolatito was a statesman, and offended too. He knew what Sor Rungvisai did was not accidental but once referee Steve Willis refused to be more officious than a point’s deduction from the Thai’s tally Chocolatito needed to remedy fouls with fouls, as craft told him he should, but Chocolatito did not and did something oh so much worse: He let selfindulgence touch him a touch.

Such indulgence begets brutalization and it surely did in March. Chocolatito’s face and head was an ugly mess by the concluding bell. What stung worse than his first career loss coming at the hands and head of an unclassed brute like Sor Rungvisai was Chocolatito’s realizing he’d have to face the man again and immediately if he chose not to retire – something like what the late Vernon Forrest felt the day after losing to Ricardo Mayorga. If Sor Rungvisai did not inflict the same mental cruelty on Chocolatito as Mayorga did Forrest he distributed a commensurate physical cruelty that would render a lesser man cautious in rematch.

Fortunately for Chocolatito there is only one strategy in the ring and a startling array of tactics for employing it – endeavor to attrition any man toeing the line before you. He expected Sor Rungvisai to fold of his own discouragement and got surprised when Sor Rungvisai did not. Class did not tell ultimately in March because it got thwarted by Sor Rungvisai’s fouling and obliviousness of his opponent’s class, which may be a roundabout way of writing class, of a certain sort, did indeed tell.

Expect Chocolatito to be the offender Saturday; if Sor Rungvisai did not pack a cup packed with reinforced beltline padding for his trip from Thailand he will regret it; Chocolatito will be targeting that beltline and a few inches above and below it from the opening bell until he is told to stop and after he is told to stop until a point gets deducted and maybe after that, too. Accustomed to enjoying benefits of all scoring doubts in his career’s 27 or so championship matches Chocolatito did not expect to lose March’s decision and now says in a convincing tone he intends to strip Sor Rungvisai of his fitness to continue, and if so, what difference will a point deduction in round 3 and another in round 8 matter?

There’s a genuine possibility, though, Chocolatito’s belting Sor Rungvisai early and often will not avenge his first loss. Sor Rungvisai well may have Chocolatito’s number; he well may have too much physicality and chin and derringdo for this 30-year-old, 115-pound iteration of Nicaragua’s second alltime great, remanding Gonzalez to retirement but leaving HBO with enough pieces – in Sor Rungvisai and Cuadras and Inoue, at least – to make an historic unification of the super flyweight division.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

LOS ANGELES, CA (September 2, 2017) WBC Super Flyweight World Champion SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI, (42-4-1, 38 KO’s), of Si Sa Ket, Thailand and former WBC Super Flyweight Champion ROMAN “CHOCOLATITO” GONZALEZ, (46-1-0, 38 KO’s), both weighed in within the required WBC 7-day weight limit ahead of their highly anticipated rematch set for Saturday, September 9 from the legendary StubHub Center in Carson, California and televised live on HBO Boxing After Dark beginning at 10:15 p.m. ET/PT.

From his training camp in Thailand, Rungvisai weighed in at 119lbs. while Gonzalez tipped the scales in Japan at 119.8lbs. Both fighters were required to weigh-in at 121lbs. or under per the World Boxing Council.

Opening the telecast, former WBC Super Flyweight World Champion CARLOS “PRINCIPE” CUADRAS, (36-1-1, 27 KO’s)) of Mexico City will battle fellow rival countrymen and former flyweight world champion JUAN FRANCISCO “EL GALLO” ESTRADA, (35-2-0, 25 KO’s) of Sonora, Mexico in a 12-round WBC Super Flyweight Title Eliminator.

Both warriors were also within the WBC 7-day weight limit from their respective training camps in Mexico with Cuadras tipping the scales at 119.9lbs. and Estrada at 121lbs.

Co-featured on the outstanding “SUPERFLY” card is the United States debut of NAOYA “THE MONSTER” INOUE, (13-0-0, 11 KO’s) of Yokohama, Japan defending his WBO Super Flyweight Title against top contender ANTONIO “CARITA” NIEVES, (17-1-2, 9 KO’s) of Cleveland, Ohio.

Remaining tickets for “SUPERFLY” are now on sale priced at $250 and $150, both of which have very limited availability, in addition to $100 and $60. The $30 price range is sold out. All ticket prices are plus applicable taxes, fees and services charges. Tickets can be purchased at AXS.com, by phone at 888-9-AXS-TIX (888-929-7849), and at StubHub Center Box Office (Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. PT to 6 p.m. PT). VIP Suites are available by calling 877-604-8777. For more information on group discounts or VIP packages, call 877-234-8425. Doors will open on the night of the event at 3:30 p.m. PT with the first bell at 4:00 p.m. PT.

The StubHub Center is located at 18400 Avalon Blvd., Carson CA, 90746 on the campus of California State University – Dominguez Hills. For directions and further information please visit their website at www.StubHubCenter.com

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LOS ANGELES, CA (August 8, 2017) WBC Super Flyweight World Champion SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI, (42-4-1, 38 KO’s), of Si Sa Ket, Thailand and former WBC Super Flyweight Champion ROMAN “CHOCOLATITO” GONZALEZ, (46-1-0, 38 KO’s), both weighed in within the required WBC 30-day weigh limit ahead of their highly anticipated rematch set for Saturday, September 9 from the legendary StubHub Center in Carson, California and televised live on HBO Boxing After Dark beginning at 10:15 p.m. ET/PT.

From his training camp in Thailand, Rungvisai weighed in at 123lbs. while Gonzalez tipped the scales in Japan at 122lbs. Both fighters were required to weigh-in at 127lbs or under per the World Boxing Council.

The Rungvisai/Gonzalez rematch of their epic clash this past March headlines the historic “SUPERFLY” card, one of the most anticipated shows of the year featuring six of the top super flyweights in the world.

Co-featured on the outstanding “SUPERFLY” card is the United States debut of NAOYA “THE MONSTER” INOUE, (13-0-0, 11 KO’s) of Yokohama, Japan defending his WBO Super Flyweight Title against top contender ANTONIO “CARITA” NIEVES, (17-1-2, 9 KO’s) of Cleveland, Ohio.

Opening the telecast, former WBC Super Flyweight World Champion CARLOS “PRINCIPE” CUADRAS, (36-1-1, 27 KO’s) of Mexico City will battle fellow rival countrymen and former flyweight world champion JUAN FRANCISCO “EL GALLO” ESTRADA, (35-2-0, 25 KO’s) of Sonora, Mexico in a 12-round WBC Super Flyweight Title Eliminator.

Also featured on the off-TV undercard is four-time champion in two weight divisions, “THE HAWAIIAN PUNCH”, BRIAN VILORIA (37-5-0, 22 KO’s) who will compete in an eight round super flyweight battle against an opponent to be announced shortly.

Remaining tickets for “SUPERFLY” are now on sale priced at $250 and $150, both of which have very limited availability, in addition to $100 and $60. The $30 price range is sold out. All ticket prices are plus applicable taxes, fees and services charges. Tickets can be purchased at AXS.com, by phone at 888-9-AXS-TIX (888-929-7849), and at StubHub Center Box Office (Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. PT to 6 p.m. PT). VIP Suites are available by calling 877-604-8777. For more information on group discounts or VIP packages, call 877-234-8425. Doors will open on the night of the event at 3:30 p.m. PT with the first bell at 4:00 p.m. PT.

The StubHub Center is located at 18400 Avalon Blvd., Carson CA, 90746 on the campus of California State University – Dominguez Hills. For directions and further information please visit their website at www.StubHubCenter.com

Photo Credit/K2 Promotions

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LOS ANGELES, CA (July 6, 2017) Southern California’s iconic outdoor boxing venue, The StubHub Center in Carson, California, home to numerous legendary nights of action over the last decade, will play host to the highly anticipated “SUPERFLY” triple header set for Saturday, September 9, it was announced today by TOM LOEFFLER, Managing Director of K2 PROMOTIONS.

Tickets for “SUPERFLY” will go on sale Tomorrow, Friday, July 7 at 12:00 p.m. PT and are priced at $250, $150, $100, $60 and $30, plus applicable taxes, fees and services charges. Tickets can be purchased at AXS.com, by phone at 888-9-AXS-TIX (888-929-7849), and at StubHub Center Box Office (Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. PT to 6 p.m. PT). VIP Suites are available by calling 877-604-8777. For more information on group discounts or VIP packages, call 877-234-8425. Doors will open on the night of the event at 3:30 p.m. PT with the first bell at 4:00 p.m. PT.

“Since we announced this extraordinary triple header a couple weeks ago, the fans have demanded it take place at their favorite venue for action, and we are excited to confirm the show will take place at the StubHub Center” said Loeffler. “We look forward to another magical night on September 9 for what many fans and media feel is the best card of 2017.”

“This event will be a little less than four years since we promoted the Gennady Golovkin vs. Marco Antonio Rubio fight at The Stubhub Center, one of the most remarkable evenings in recent years that broke the boxing attendance record and we look forward to another memorable event on September 9.”

“I have to give a great deal of credit to the six promoters I worked with to put this event together; Teiken Promotions, Nakornloung Promotion, Ohashi Promotions, Salita Promotions, Promociones del Pueblo and Zanfer Promotions. The cooperative spirit of all parties was the key in putting together this outstanding, world-class international card.”

“Additionally I’d like to thank the team at the StubHub Center and Dan Beckerman of AEG for their help in presenting this event.”

Televised live on HBO Boxing After Dark beginning at 10:15 p.m. ET/PT, “SUPERFLY” is headlined by the WBC Super Flyweight World Champion SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI, (43-4-1, 39 KO’s), of Si Sa Ket, Thailand, defending his title against former champion “ROMAN “CHOCOLATITO” GONZALEZ (46-1-0, 38 KO’s), of Managua, Nicaragua, in a rematch of their epic battle this past March.

On March 18, 2017, ‘Chocolatito’, universally recognized at the time as The #1 Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World and holder of the WBC Super Flyweight Title, battled Srisaket Sor Rungivisai in front of a massive crowd at ‘The Mecca of Boxing’, Madison Square Garden.

Despite being dropped in the first round, the valiant ‘Chocolatito’ battled back in a brutal war that included a tremendous amount of hard-hitting from both combatants along with a number of head butts due to the aggressive styles of the orthodox champion and southpaw challenger.

Sor Rungvisai was declared the winner by controversial majority decision, 114-112, 114-112 and 113-113 in a fight that many believe to be the leading candidate for this year’s “Fight of the Year.”

The World Boxing Council (WBC) ordered an immediate rematch so there would be no question who their champion would be.

Co-featured on the outstanding “SUPERFLY” card is the highly anticipated United States debut of NAOYA “THE MONSTER” INOUE, (13-0-0, 11 KO’s) of Yokohama, Japan defending his WBO Super Flyweight Title against top contender ANTONIO “CARITA” NIEVES, (17-1-2, 9 KO’s) of Cleveland, Ohio.

The 24-year-old Inoue is among the most popular fighters in Asia, having already made five defenses of his WBO Super Flyweight Title he earned following his second round knockout of Omar Narvaez on December 30, 2014 in Tokyo, Japan.

Earning his nickname, “The Monster” from his heavy handed knockouts, Inoue is seeking to grow his fan base from the huge Asian community of U.S. based boxing fans.

Inoue kicked off his 2017 campaign with a third round stoppage of Ricardo Rodriguez on May 21 in Tokyo, Japan.

Fighting out of Cleveland, Ohio, Nieves will be looking to join the long history of world champions of Puerto Rican heritage. Undefeated through the first six years of his professional career, Nieves suffered his first loss very controversially, losing a 10-round split decision to Nikolai Potapov on March 10 in Detroit, Michigan.

Opening the telecast, former WBC Super Flyweight World Champion CARLOS “PRINCIPE” CUADRAS, (36-1-1, 27 KO’s)) of Mexico City will battle fellow rival countrymen and former flyweight world champion JUAN FRANCISCO “EL GALLO” ESTRADA, (35-2-0, 25 KO’s) of Sonora, Mexico in a 12-round WBC Super Flyweight Title Eliminator.

In a 2016 ‘Fight of the Year’ contender, former WBC Super Flyweight Champion Cuadras would lose for the first time in his eight-year career on September 10, 2016 by unanimous decision to Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez. Fighting furiously over the course of the twelve epic rounds in front of a huge crowd at The Fabulous Forum, Cuadras would come up just short on the scorecards losing by unanimous decision.

Most recently, Cuadras won a hard fought 10-round unanimous decision over fellow Mexican David Carmona on March 18, 2017 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

A former unified flyweight world champion, Estrada is best known for his action packed 12-round battle with Roman Gonzalez on November 17, 2012 in Los Angeles, losing a very close decision. Estrada also holds wins over former world champions Brian Viloria, Giovani Segura and Hernan Marquez.

The StubHub Center is located at 18400 Avalon Blvd., Carson CA, 90746 on the campus of California State University – Dominguez Hills. For directions and further information please visit their website at www.StubHubCenter.com

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Hashtag: #SuperFly

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LOS ANGELES, CA (June 17, 2017) The Super Flyweight Division, long one of boxing’s most exciting, filled with many of the sports’ legendary superstars, will add another chapter into its annals of memorable evenings on Saturday, September 9.

WBC Super Flyweight World Champion SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI, (43-4-1, 39 KO’s), of Si Sa Ket, Thailand, defends his title against former champion “ROMAN “CHOCOLATITO” GONZALEZ (46-1-0, 38 KO’s), of Managua, Nicaragua, in a rematch of their epic battle this past March. The rematch headlines a tripleheader that will be televised live on HBO Boxing After Dark beginning at 10:15 p.m. ET/PT.

Co-featured on the outstanding “SUPERFLY” card is the highly anticipated United States debut of NAOYA “THE MONSTER” INOUE, (13-0-0, 11 KO’s) of Yokohama, Japan defending his WBO Super Flyweight Title against top contender ANTONIO “CARITA” NIEVES, (17-1-2, 9 KO’s) of Cleveland, Ohio.

Opening the telecast, former WBC Super Flyweight World Champion CARLOS “PRINCIPE” CUADRAS, (36-1-1, 27 KO’s)) of Mexico City will battle fellow rival countrymen and former flyweight world champion JUAN FRANCISCO “EL GALLO” ESTRADA, (35-2-0, 25 KO’s) of Sonora, Mexico.

The venue location and ticket information will be announced shortly.

“We’re very excited to present this fantastic triple header featuring the top five super flyweights in the world,” said TOM LOEFFLER of K2 PROMOTIONS. “With the great history of memorable bouts in the super flyweight combined with the extraordinary talents of these six fighters in these two world championship fights along with the world title eliminator, the fans will truly be the winners of this event.”

“Boxing fans will have the rare opportunity to see if the new champion, Sor Rungvisai can repeat his performance with another victory or if ‘Chocolatito’ will prove that he still belongs at the top of the pound-for-pound list by avenging a controversial loss.”

“We have had great interest from numerous venues wishing to host this event, we are currently working through the locations and will have a site and ticket announcement shortly.”

“Thanks very much to Peter Nelson of HBO for his continued foresight and interest in the lighter weight divisions which has influenced this tremendous event with the top five fighters in the super flyweight division being showcased.”

“This all-action super flyweight tripleheader will have fight fans eagerly awaiting September 9th,” says Peter Nelson, Executive Vice President, HBO Sports. “We applaud all six fighters for their willingness to lace up their gloves to face the very best.”

“I would like to thank WBC, HBO, and K2 promotion for this opportunity,” said Srisaket Sor Rungvisai. “I’m honored to share the ring again and defend the WBC Super Flyweight Title against Roman Gonzalez. He is a legend and the best fighter I have faced.”

“I’m training hard to be the winner of this rematch. Boxing fans around the world will get to see another great fight between us, and I will win and take the WBC World Championship title back for everyone in Thailand.”

“I’m ready to go back into battle and reclaim by WBC Super Flyweight Championship from Sor Rungvisai on September 9,” said ‘Chocolatito’. “I know what I have to do to become victorious and with God’s help I will be champion once again.”

“As always thanks very much to Mr. Honda, K2 Promotions and HBO for this opportunity.”

On March 18, 2017, ‘Chocolatito’, universally recognized as The #1 Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World and holder of the WBC Super Flyweight Title, battled Srisaket Sor Rungivisai in front of a massive crowd at ‘The Mecca of Boxing’, Madison Square Garden.

Despite being dropped in the first round, the valiant ‘Chocolatito’ battled back in a brutal war that included a tremendous amount of hard-hitting from both combatants along with a number of head butts due to the aggressive styles of the orthodox champion and southpaw challenger.

Sor Rungvisai was declared the winner by controversial majority decision, 114-112, 114-112 and 113-113 in a fight that many believe to be the leading candidate for this year’s “Fight of the Year.”

The World Boxing Council (WBC) ordered an immediate rematch so there would be no question who their champion would be.

Stated Naoya Inoue about his title defense and first bout in the United States, “It’s been my dream to fight in the United States and I’m very excited to be defending my title against Antonio Nieves on September 9. I look forward to putting on a great performance for the fans.”

“I’m very excited to face Naoya Inoue for the WBO Super Flyweight Title on September 9,” said Antonio Nieves. “This is my first world title opportunity and I’m very grateful to HBO, Tom Loeffler and Tim VanNewhouse for making this possible.”

The 24-year-old Inoue is among the most popular fighters in Asia, having already made five defenses of his WBO Super Flyweight Title he was awarded following his second round knockout of Omar Narvaez on December 30, 2014 in Tokyo, Japan.

Earning his nickname, “The Monster” from his heavy handed knockouts, Inoue is seeking to grow his fan base from the huge Asian community of U.S. based boxing fans.

Inoue kicked off his 2017 campaign with a third round stoppage of Ricardo Rodriguez on May 21 in Tokyo, Japan.

Fighting out of Cleveland, Ohio, Nieves will be looking to join the long history of world champions of Puerto Rican heritage. Undefeated through the first six years of his professional career, Nieves suffered his first loss very controversially, losing a 10-round split decision to Nikolai Potapov on March 10 in Detroit, Michigan.

Stated Carlos Cuadras, “I can’t wait to get back in the ring on September 9 against Juan Estrada. He’s a very tough fighter but I will be victorious and put on a show for the fans, then I want a fight with whoever is the champion ‘Chocolatito’ or Sor Rungvisai to get my belt back.”

“Carlos Cuadras is a great Champion and we will have a great fight but he is just the first step towards me becoming the best super flyweight in the world! See you September 9,” said Juan Francisco Estrada.

In a 2016 ‘Fight of the Year’ contender, former WBC Super Flyweight Champion Cuadras would lose for the first time in his eight-year career on September 10, 2016 by unanimous decision to Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez. Fighting furiously over the course of the twelve epic rounds in front of a huge crowd at The Fabulous Forum, Cuadras would come up just short on the scorecards losing by unanimous decision.

Most recently, Cuadras won a hard fought 10-round unanimous decision over fellow Mexican David Carmona on March 18, 2017 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

A former unified flyweight world champion, Estrada is best known for his action packed 12-round battle with Roman Gonzalez on November 17, 2012 in Los Angeles, losing a very close decision. Estrada also holds wins over former world champions Brian Viloria, Giovani Segura and Hernan Marquez.

SOCIAL MEDIA:
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The WBC received a request from Teiken Promotions and K2 Promotions to order a direct rematch between their fighter, Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, and Srisaket Sor Rungvisai after their sensational fight on March 18, which was won by majority decision by Sor Rungvisai from Thailand.

The WBC Board of Governors considers that due to the extraordinary fight, which was extremely close, and considering that the WBC championship rules regarding accidental head butts were not used, but most importantly, considering the public demand to witness once again a great match between these two great fighters, the WBC has granted the request by unanimous vote to order the rematch between Sor Rungvisai and Gonzalez.

The WBC convention ruling had ordered the winner of march 18 to fight Carlos Cuadras, and considering that the rematch will not take place in some time due to the medical suspension of both fighters, the WBC is ordering an interim championship between the two highest available contenders, Cuadras and Juan Francisco Estrada.

The winners of both fights – Srisaket vs. Gonzalez and Cuadras vs. Estrada – must fight each other next.

The WBC is very pleased with this ruling that will provide a series of great fights in the super flyweight division, which is very important for boxing and for the boxers.

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez lost a majority decision to an unheralded if not entirely overlooked Thai fighter named Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek in a fight that was not expected to confirm Gonzalez’ greatness yet did just that, judges’ appraisal of his performance be damned.

For those who have never been particularly enamoured with Gonzalez, those who find little intimidating about a prizefighter who barely meets the height requirements of a rollercoaster, or who are predisposed to antipathy whenever a collective enthusiasm swells too quickly and coincidently, too utterly, Gonzalez’ loss to a fighter likely to be remembered not by his name but by some strung together series of attributes like “That-Thai-Guy-Who-Beat-Chocolatito” must be satisfying. More so even, considering “The-Bum-That-Exposed-Roman” is Gonzalez’ fighting inferior in every way, owing any advantage he held Saturday night exclusively to size—which is to say, to little he could take much credit for. Nor does decrying the decision mitigate the defeat. Gonzalez was dropped in the first round and abused regularly, such that establishing his dominance in a manner that was convincing not simply in its craft but in the response that craft produced required every one of the 33 remaining minutes he had.

Gonzalez falling just short should not come as a complete surprise both because of the diminished returns Gonzalez has found as a super flyweight and because he has been pursuing defeat his entire career. In hindsight, it is easy to trace a fighter’s path to defeat, to see the harbingers of the inevitable often overlooked in victory. This applies to Gonzalez as well, who is still a near-perfect weapon but one now short on firepower (ever a problem for an undersized pressure fighter). Yet Gonzalez is special in the way that he willingly, consistently put himself in a position to encourage this induction.

There is a telling moment in HBO’s “2 Days: Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez” where, speaking of fighters who have fallen short of their dreams, Gonzalez says: “They don’t realize that the more you win, the tougher the fights.” What is first striking about this statement is how naive it sounds. Gonzalez envisions a sport where fighters are not regularly rewarded for victories with easier fights, where their reputations are not frequently established off little more than a noteworthy win or two and preserved via machinations meant to secure a narrative rather than sound out the truth. And what of his speaking of tougher fights when so many of his fraternity would have employed the word “bigger”? It implies that Gonzalez still trusts in the role of meritocracy in his sport. Charming that; rare too, and indicative perhaps of what influence a country’s fighting idol can have on its gloved hopefuls. America, then, should not expect to produce the next Gonzalez.

His words also reveal the psychology of a fighter who pursues defeat; that it took Gonzalez twelve years to find it had nothing to do with risk aversion, his unbeaten streak is not the product of culling a feeble herd. A singular talent, that people still assert otherwise of Gonzalez when so many fighters make their reputations off the eye-test is baffling. In his march through four divisions, Gonzalez has cut down plenty of deserving adversaries while treating any Dierry Jeans, Dominic Wades, Blake Camparellos, and Alexander Brands he met along the way as a fighter of his stock should.

But you need know none of that—you need only watch him to understand what a unique fighter Gonzalez is.

And has he ever been greater than he was in the twelfth round Saturday night? When, with cuts from headbutts accidental and otherwise left his right eye streaming blood, taxed from twelve rounds with an opponent he could crack but not shatter, an opponent whose physical presence alone made demands of him that smaller better fighters could not, Gonzalez stepped to center ring and left no doubt about what kind of fighter he is?

While Wangek punched and pushed, pushed and held, Gonzalez set about his work: weaving into and chopping away at an opponent who more and more seemed eager to simply survive, to take whatever punishment he need to find sanctuary in a clinch. Using angles that not only allowed him to find softer targets for his punches but left his opponent one-handed, how masterfully did Gonzalez make his final bid for victory. There would be no dramatic stoppage, that much was clear, yet Gonzalez continued his assault, forcing the bigger, stronger, harder punching man into a fight he wanted little to do with until, finally spent, Gonzalez had to simply catch Wangek’s closing flurry on his gloves and offer one last jab as the bell sounded.

Against this latest daunting opponent, that effort was not enough. And that is as it should be, considering Gonzalez has spent so much of his career tempting just such a night. It is entirely possible that a series of losses come in the wake of his first if only because it is hard to imagine Gonzalez taking anything but a difficult fight. But his losses will never define him: they will be expected, forgiven, perhaps even celebrated.

What does it mean to pursue defeat? In short, to pursue greatness. Gonzalez finally caught up to the former which is why the latter was his long ago.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday the Chocolatito Era concluded when Nicaraguan Roman Gonzalez got narrowly and perhaps unfairly split-decisioned by Thailand’s Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek in a brutal 12-round affair. In the mainevent a different tradition of matching the world’s best middleweight against a fellow middleweight began, when Gennady “GGG” Golovkin decisioned Daniel Jacobs, and let us hope this new era endures fractionally long as the other one did.

Whosoever would be idiot enough to write something like this: “After the decade Chocolatito labored in obscurity it brings no joy to write a match of his does not belong on American television much less HBO PPV, but heavens to Murgatroyd, this one verily does not”?

Guilty, my friends, and decisively so.

Whether Sor Rungvisai deserved to become a champion Saturday he belonged in a ring with Chocolatito in a way no one before him has done and once there he made brutal combat – disrespectful, randyrough, unfair, despicable – till he was eligible for a title few gave him a chance at (even if no one publicly gave him less of a chance than this column’s agebadly effort).

It was inevitable: If a prizefighter moves upwards in weight as he moves upwards in age someday he gets beat by a man who is not good a prizefighter as he is but able to offset class with physicality by absorbing what punches smaller men cannot and damaging with less effort than smaller men can. Exactly that happened to Chocolatito, every bit Saturday his diminutive suffix -ito, who struck Sor Rungvisai with the same accurate shots he strikes everyone with and applied much of the same tactical originality he applies to every opponent’s head and body but the difference was Sor Rungvisai’s size and desire and apparent obliviousness of who was the man punching him. Whereas the mainevent saw a b-level middleweight will himself past an obvious consciousness about his opponent’s identity – and in so doing reveal quite a lot about the actual quality of the middleweight champion (and how about the postfight sparkle in Golovkin’s eyes when asked about a September return to a junior middleweight opponent!) – the comain saw a man who showed up for a world title fight against an anonymous smaller man and acted like it.

Wherever or however Sor Rungvisai hit Chocolatito in round 1 he dropped him true and it tolled Chocolatito’s psyche finding himself seated, a ref fingerflashing overhead. It portended still worse things for anyone who hoped to enjoy Chocolatito for more than another match or two, too: You don’t make a fight-of-the-year candidate with Sor Rungvisai and go on to enjoy a long pleasant stay in your new super flyweight division. Instead you cautiously win a wellpaying rematch then cash yourself out – making, as an aside, charismatic Carlos Cuadras Saturday’s biggest loser.

On a personal note the emotions went something like: Excitement (here we go) to surprise (Chocolatito’s on the blue mat) to shame (what did I write?) to sadness (Chocolatito looks so small) to elation (he’s spinning him gorgeously!) to indignation (that butt was intentional) to anger (he butted him again) to amusement (butting when in you’re in trouble is effective in its way, isn’t it?) to excitement (he’s spinning him again, yes!) to disappointment (the geometry’s wrong) to nervousness to sadness.

Whatever dudgeon happened in the moment and however much pain Chocolatito is in today and tomorrow and the rest of the week, fact remains Sor Rungvisai, as a large southpaw, sold accidental headbutts sufficiently to remain undisqualified while severely altering a championship match’s trajectory with his head. There was little if anything accidental about any but the first butt and it was apparent three ways: 1. The timing of the accidents, 2. Chocolatito’s evident disgust with the accidents, and 3. The asymmetry of their effect. When two fighters’ heads keep colliding whenever one fighter is hurt, and the other fighter is the only one buzzed and bleeding afresh after each collision, there’s no chance at the championship level anything accidental is happening.

There are ways to remedy these things and Chocolatito, who has gone below the belt plethoras of times in his career, did none of them, and one suspects he didn’t do them because he didn’t think them necessary. First time, shame on Sor Rungvisai; second time . . . expect Chocolatito to go low early and often in a rematch the Nicaraguan’ll take personally and more seriously than their first match – and expect the new champion to be looking refereewards in the rematch more than his challenger.

While the damage suffered in the comain was asymmetrical the card itself did conclude with a symmetric quality of sorts: Chocolatito nearing the end of a career marked by increasing weightclasses and challenges; GGG beginning what one hopes is a career of fighting men large enough to hurt him – and looking only a touch better than average in so doing. While ESPN scrambles to revise its bro-science feature on Golovkin’s otherworldly power (something about Daniel Jacobs’ episode with cancer making his chin exponents more resilient than it was before both cancer and Dmitry Pirog) and HBO manufactures demand enough for Canelo-GGG to put this uncomfortable Jacobs episode behind us all, aficionados can use what they saw Saturday to temper, once more, their opinions of undefeated records.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

HBO Sports presents WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING®: GENNADY GOLOVKIN VS. DANIEL JACOBS AND ROMAN “CHOCOLATITO GONZALEZ VS. SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI, the exclusive replay of their highly anticipated world championship title fights, SATURDAY, MARCH 25 at 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT). The HBO Sports team, which was ringside at New York’s Madison Square Garden on March 18, called all the action, which will be available in HDTV, closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired and presented in Spanish on HBO Latino.
Other HBO playdates: March 26 (10:30 a.m.) and 28 (11:00 p.m.)
HBO2 playdate: March 26 (3:45 p.m.) and 27 (11:20 p.m.)
The two-fight combo will also be available on HBO NOW, HBO GO® and HBO On Demand®.
Among the sport’s top pound-for-pound performers, Golovkin put his undefeated mark, extraordinary ring record and collection of 160-pound world title belts on the line against hometown hero Daniel Jacobs of Brooklyn in a fight originally carried live on HBO Pay-Per-View®. The co-feature marked a super flyweight title bout between reigning champ and pound-for-pound ace Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez and challenger Srisaket Sor Rungvisai of Thailand.

By Bart Barry

Saturday at Madison Square Garden on the undercard of HBO’s pay-per-view match for the unified middleweight championship of the world, the world’s best prizefighter, Nicaraguan Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, will defend his super flyweight title against Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek, a fighter whose recent reign of terror on Thailand’s amateur program Chocolatito should bring to a brisk and violent conclusion – and perhaps rekindle in so doing.

After the decade Chocolatito labored in obscurity it brings no joy to write a match of his does not belong on American television much less HBO PPV, but heavens to Murgatroyd, this one verily does not. Instead this represents the sort of back-wages wager Bernard Hopkins taught prizefighters to make with their managers and promoters and broadcasters, today marginally more one-in-the-same as they’ve ever been, once acclaim was had and serious observers were seriously interested in observing one fight. We shall hitherto call it the Morrade Hakkar Clause in homage to the silly Frenchman HBO approved for the second defense of a middleweight title Hopkins won from Felix Trinidad in the greatest moment of Hopkins’ career to that point. Before Hopkins’ negative fighting style and self-intoxication were considered alternately brilliant and charismatic they were considered properly unbearable but HBO was hot on the trail of a rematch between Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. in 2002 and eager to agree to most any demands Hopkins made, and Hopkins’ demands, inspired by Jones’ demands, were wild for a man who couldn’t sell 8,000 tickets in his hometown but reasonable through a lens of his accomplishments and Time Warner’s annual corporate revenues. HBO acquiesced and Hopkins-Hakkar was atrocious.

And Trinidad put Hopkins through fractionally the suffering Chocolatito experienced against Carlos Cuadras in September, writing of back wages, which is part of the reason Chocolatito mentioned HBO by name in December:

“I’m 29 years-old, and one has to seize the moment we are in,” Chocolatito said. “I will give a rematch to Cuadras, but I need a good purse from HBO. I believe I deserve it.”

As a craftsman of course Chocolatito deserves it but as an entertainer he likely doesn’t and it’s no one’s fault he believes he does because, after all, America sells meritocracy to the rest of the world, and so why shouldn’t the prizefighter American aficionados consider the world’s best make 0.4-percent the purse the last guy Americans considered the world’s best made against Manny Pacquiao? Because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing a few years ago and we still don’t – that’s the honest answer, but what American businessman’s honest enough to say it, and what Nicaraguan’d be ingenuous enough to believe it?

Instead we’ll cite the dynamics of a free market, when convenient, while having the world’s best fighter defending a title in his fourth weightclass on the undercard of a middleweight-unification bout, HBO champion vs. PBC, between two men who’ve never chanced a moment outside the middleweight division, though the HBO champion is frequently reportedly willing to fight anyone between 154 and 168 pounds and hobbled only by junior middleweights who won’t come up to 160 and super middleweights who won’t come down to 160 but otherwise ready, willing and able. The main event is expected to be mismatched enough for last week’s prefight promotion to be about gossiping whether the HBO champion has time between Saturday’s inevitable defense and September’s better-paying inevitable defense to make another inevitable defense in June.

Not to be outdone Roman Gonzalez will fight Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek, a man whose last two opponents sported a cumulative record of 0-0 before Sor Rungvisai, in his 45th and 46th prizefights respectively, welcomed them harshly to the professional ranks, in a match Gonzalez will win decisively no matter his opponent’s physical advantage. There’s no way to rehearse for someone gifted as Gonzalez, though if fighting men in their pro debuts properly prepares Sor Rungvisai for Chocolatito, one weeps for the futures of amateur heavyweight boxers with Deontay Wilder on the loose. Absurd as we rightly consider most athletic commissions in the U.S. how about that Thai commission(s) approving the WBC silver super flyweight champion for four 2016 matches against opponents with a cumulative record of 15-19! (Sor Rungvisai fought as many men making their pro debuts in his eighth year of professional fighting in Thailand as he did the year he made his own pro debut.)

There’s no occasion for not being snide on occasions such as these but enough of the griping: Any opportunity to see Chocolatito ply his wares must be embraced because Chocolatito is a rare talent, and as aficionados we owe HBO a debt of gratitude for bringing him more exposure, a debt all aficionados will argue is still much less than the cost of an HBO subscription and quarterly pay-per-view bills, but some gratitude’s due nevertheless. From Saturday’s victory things’ll go one of two ways for Chocolatito: After taking another 36 minutes of abuse from a career super flyweight he’ll double his demands for a rematch with Carlos Cuadras and price himself back to obscurity, or he’ll glide so easily through Sor Rungvisai and receive such disapprobation from the Nicaraguan media – “Stop talking about money like an American, Alexi never did; you’re better than that, you’re a Nicaraguan” – he’ll abandon his campaign to match compensation to achievement and return to beating fellow world champions for somewhat less than he deserves but way more than another 115-pound athlete makes in the world.

Making him what Floyd Mayweather would call a “dummy” and historians will call an “all-time great.”

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

ANAGUA, NICARAGUA (January 23, 2017) Consensus #1 Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World and World Boxing Council (WBC) Super Flyweight Champion ROMAN “CHOCOLATITO” GONZALEZ, (46-0-0, 38 KO’s), held court in front of a huge crowd of Nicaraguan media before heading to Costa Rica for training camp in preparations to defend his title against Mandatory Challenger SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI (41-4-1, (38 KO’s) of Si Sa Ket, Thailand, on Saturday, March 18, 2017, at “The Mecca of Boxing”, Madison Square Garden.

Gonzalez is one of the country’s most popular figures, having been mentored by Nicaraguan boxing legend, the late ALEXIS ARGUELLO. In his last fight, a brilliant 12-round decision over CARLOS CUADRAS on September 10 at The Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles and telecast on HBO, Gonzalez became a fourth divisional world champion, the first in the Nicaragua’s history.

Gonzalez was joined at the press conference by his manager, CARLOS BLANDON.

ROMAN “CHOCOLATITO” GONZALEZ
“Sor Rungvisai is a fighter very tough fighter who wants my title. His fighting style suits me however I have to be careful because of his power.”

“I have all the tools to beat him. He has power but not much else but I also have to watch for possible head-butts.”

“Training in Costa Rica is very good for me. I’ve never liked the cold and right now it’s too cold in Big Bear.”

“I have no problem giving Carlos Cuadras a rematch but right now my focus is on Sor Rungvisai who is my mandatory for the WBC.”

“I have the perfect game plan and on March 18 there will be no surprises. I’m leaving Monday, we had a great camp in Costa Rica for the McWilliams Arroyo fight and we are planning to have another great camp for this fight there.”

“I feel very confident that I will be victorious for my fans here in Nicaragua and all over the world, those watching on HBO Pay-Per-View and those in attendance in Madison Square Garden. I loved fighting in New York City last time and look forward to March 18 when I return.”

“With the passing of my longtime trainer Arnulfo Obando, my head trainer will now be my father Luis Gonzalez and also in my corner will be Wilmer Hernandez. They were both assistants to Arnulfo throughout my career.”

CARLOS BLANDON
“We are very excited to start training in Costa Rica on Monday (January 23). Hopefully we will have the same excellent result we did when we trained there for McWilliams Arroyo.”

“Right now it’s snowing and cold in Big Bear and we feel it’s better for Roman to train in Costa Rica where it is warmer, although in Big Bear was where Roman had one of his best training camps before the Carlos Cuadras fight.”

“I expect that with the proper preparations in training camp that we will see an explosive fight and another great victory for Roman on March 18.”

Chocolatito vs. Rungvisai will be the co-feature to the World Middleweight Championship between Unified Middleweight World Champion GENNADY “GGG” GOLOVKIN, (36-0-0, 33 KO’s) and WBA Middleweight World Champion and Mandatory Challenger DANIEL “THE MIRACLE MAN” JACOBS, (32-1, 29 KO’s). The event will be produced and distributed live by HBO Pay-Per-View beginning at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT

Presented by K2 Promotions in association with Teiken Promotions, tickets priced at $1000, $600, $400, $300, $200 and $100, are now on sale and can be purchased at the Madison Square Garden Box Office, all Ticketmaster outlets, Ticketmaster charge by phone (866-858-0008) and online at www.ticketmaster.com or www.thegarden.com

NEW YORK CITY (January 17, 2017) Consensus #1 Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World and World Boxing Council (WBC) Super Flyweight Champion ROMAN “CHOCOLATITO” GONZALEZ, (46-0-0, 38 KO’s), fighting out of Managua, Nicaragua, will defend his title against Mandatory Challenger SRISAKET SOR RUNGVISAI (41-4-1, (38 KO’s) of Si Sa Ket, Thailand, on Saturday, March 18, 2017, at “The Mecca of Boxing”, Madison Square Garden.

Chocolatito vs. Rungvisai will be the co-feature to the World Middleweight Championship between Unified Middleweight World Champion GENNADY “GGG” GOLOVKIN, (36-0-0, 33 KO’s) and WBA Middleweight World Champion and Mandatory Challenger DANIEL “THE MIRACLE MAN” JACOBS, (32-1, 29 KO’s). The event will be produced and distributed live by HBO Pay-Per-View beginning at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT

Presented by K2 Promotions in association with Teiken Promotions, tickets priced at $1000, $600, $400, $300, $200 and $100, are now on sale and can be purchased at the Madison Square Garden Box Office, all Ticketmaster outlets, Ticketmaster charge by phone (866-858-0008) and online at www.ticketmaster.com or www.thegarden.com

“I’m very excited to fight again at Madison Square Garden. Thanks to Mr. Honda and the Teiken family along with K2 Promotions and the HBO Pay-Per-View Team for this tremendous opportunity, “said Gonzalez.

“Rungvisai is a very tough fight for me, I know that he has fought many other great fighters including Carlos Cuadras, but with my training and the blessing of God I plan to come out victorious.”

Said Rungvisai, “I respect Roman Gonzalez. He is a legend. He has done great things for boxing, especially by showing the world how talented and exciting smaller weight fighters can be. I am happy for Nicaragua to have such a great hero. However, super flyweight is my weight. And the WBC Super Flyweight World title belt is my belt. I will do whatever it takes to win my belt back, and I am confident I can do it. I was able to hurt Carlos Cuadras in the way that Gonzalez could not. Cuadras did not hurt me when we fought but he hurt Gonzalez throughout their fight last year. I am confident I can beat Roman Gonzalez. And the fight will not go twelve rounds.”

“I have to thank WBC, HBO, and K2 Promotions for this great opportunity. It is my dream to fight at Madison Square Garden. I am thrilled to be the first Thai to fight there on HBO Pay-Per-View against the #1 Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World. This is history. I will fight for Thailand and my family. I will fight to bring back the WBC Superflyweight belt to Thailand where it belongs. Some fans in America might not know me well, but I have knockout power and I will go there to win. I cannot be more excited to show you and the world who Srisaket Sor Rungvisai is. It will be a great fight on March 18th. ”

“We’re very excited to bring “Chocolatito” back to the ‘Mecca of Boxing’, Madison Square Garden and to have his fight co-featured on this HBO Pay-Per-View,” said Tom Loeffler, Managing Director of K2 Promotions. “Rungvisai is an excellent fighter and this will be a very tough challenge for Roman in the first defense of his WBC Super Flyweight World Title won in his epic battle with Carlos Cuadras on September 10th which was telecast on HBO from The Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles.”

“This will be the fifth time Roman and Gennady have fought on the same telecast, they are truly the best combination in boxing to provide fans the maximum value which is always our aim in these promotions for fans in attendance and watching on HBO Pay-Per-View.”

“We are thrilled to have the consensus #1 pound for pound fighter, Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, as the co-feature for this explosive event”, said Tony Walker, Vice President, HBO Sports. “Chocolatito will take on mandatory challenger Srisaket Sor Rungvisai in what we expect to be an all-action fight. Featuring two of the consensus top fighters in the world on the same card underscores the value of the March 18 HBO Pay-Per-View event.”

This past September 10, the 29-year-old Gonzalez faced the biggest challenge of his career, facing undefeated WBC Super Flyweight Champion Carlos Cuadras as he sought his fourth divisional world title. In a 2016 ‘Fight of the Year’ candidate in front of a very large and passionate crowd at the iconic venue, The Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles, Gonzalez won a 12-round unanimous decision.

The victory, dedicated to Gonzalez’s mentor, boxing legend Alexis Arguello, distinguished Gonzalez as the first fighter from Nicaragua to earn four divisional world titles and further validated his status as the sport’s Consensus #1 Pound-for-Pound Fighter.

On October 17, 2015, Gonzalez made his debut at “The World’s Most Famous Arena” knocking out four-division world champion Brian Viloria in the ninth round in front of a sold-out Madison Square Garden and live on HBO Pay-Per-View. The victory took place on the undercard to the World Middleweight Championship between Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and David Lemieux.

The 30-year-old heavy-handed Rungvisai will be fighting for the first time in the United States against Gonzalez. A four-time world title challenger, Rungvisai challenged then WBC Super Flyweight Champion Carlos Cuadras on May 31, 2014.

In an action-packed battle featuring excellent two-way action, Rungvisai was the unfortunate victim of a shortened bout as Cuadras was deemed unable to continue after the eighth round following an accidental clash of heads between the two warriors. Going to the scorecards, Rungvisai came up just short with Cuadras retaining his title.

SOCIAL MEDIA — #GGGJACOBS, #CHOCOLATITORUNGVISAI

Gennady “GGG” Golovkin
@GGGBoxing – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Daniel Jacobs
@DanielJacobsTKO – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Roman Gonzalez
@ChocolatitoBox

HBO
@HBO, @HBOBoxing – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Madison Square Garden
@TheGarden – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Tom Loeffler (K2 Promotions)
@TomLoeffler1 — Twitter

Roman Gonzalez will defend the WBC Super Flyweight title against Srisaket Sor Rungvisai on March 18th at Madison Square Garden as the co-feature bout on the Gennady Golovkin – Daniel Jacobs Middleweight unification bout, according to Dan Rafael of espn.com.

“Many people consider Sor Rungvisai more dangerous or just as dangerous as Cuadras. This is not an easier fight than a rematch with Cuadras,” Gonzalez U.S. representative Tom Loeffler told ESPN. “Roman and his team decided to fight Srisaket with the winner having to fight Cuadras.”

“He is a very dangerous opponent for Roman and even though many of the U.S. fans might not know him, the boxing people know him,” Loeffler said. “When we have the combination of GGG and Chocolatito in arguably the toughest fights of their career on the same card, that’s the type of value we want to provide for the fans that come to Madison Square Garden or the fans who buy the card on HBO PPV.”

“This will be their fifth appearance on the same broadcast together. It’s a great combination when you have the two best pound-for-pound fighters in the world on the same show,” Loeffler said. “The fans can see the talent level these guys have. All four of these fighters are extremely talented. That’s a winning combination for the fans.”