Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez has a potential fight date on December 8 against an opponent still to be determined on what is expected to be HBO’s final boxing telecast, according to ESPN. This would be a double-header.
Cecilia Braekhus (34-0, 9 KOs) will be defending her women’s welterweight world title. Top Loeffler of K2 Promotions is still looking for a venue for the card. It’s hard to believe that the struggling former four division world champion Chocolatito is fighting in the main event on HBO’s final broadcast of boxing on December 8. It’s an end of an era, and it’s sad to see HBO going out with a squeak instead of a bang by having a down in his luck fighter like Gonzalez as their headliner. Given Gonzalez’s recent defeats, it’s unlikely that he’s going to fight anyone good in his next fight.
World Boxing Organization junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia (31-0, 25 KOs) was previously mentioned as being on the December 8 card, but with Golden Boy Promotions signing a big $365 million, 5-year deal for their biggest star Saul Canelo Alvarez to fight on DAZN, it’s likely that Munguia’s fights will now be on that network as well. Part of that deal is for Golden Boy to have 11 big fight cards a year on DAZN.
Gonzalez, 31, has seen his career take a big hit with two losses to Srisaket Sor Rungvisai and a grueling fight against Carlos Cuadras in 2016, which he won, but he took a massive amount of punishment in the fight before it went to the scorecards. Gonzalez is in a tough spot with his career. He’s seemingly unable to go back down to the 108 and 112 weight classes, and he’s too small to be a factor against the best at 115.
Earlier in his career, Gonzalez was the predator in the light flyweight and flyweight divisions, but now things have changed with Chocolatito fighting at super flyweight where he lacks the size and power to dominate like he did in the past. Gonzalez snapped his two-fight losing streak in beating Moises Fuentes by a 5th round knockout last month on September 15 on the undercard of Gennady Golovkin vs. Saul Canelo Alvarez on HBO PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Gonzalez needs to be matched against guys that he can potentially beat like Juan Francisco Estrada and Williams Arroyo. Those are both fighters that Chocolatito beat years ago. I’m not sure that he can beat them now. Chocolatito barely beat Estrada in 2012 when he was in the prime of his career. Estrada had gotten better, but he’s still in the wrong division in following Gonzalez up to 115, where he lost recently to Rungvisai.