A fighter from the 90s mostly remembered for his great battle against Kevin Kelley when he stopped him to become the WBC Featherweight champ but his reign didn't last too long. He had 2 successful title defenses including a win over Louie Espinoza but would later lose the title with a split decision loss to Manuel Medina and then lost again in a title fight when he was stopped by Luisito Espinosa in a 4 round war. He would also defeat future champs Steve Forbes and Orlando Salido before losing to Stevie Johnston. How good of a fighter was Gonzalez? He was an all action pressure fighter somewhat similar to that of Julio Cesar Chavez. Had a somewhat limited one dimensional style but was still a crowd pleaser nonetheless. This content is protected This content is protected This content is protected This content is protected This content is protected
He fought in a WBC featherweight eliminator against César "La Cobrita" Soto Esquivel as the co-main event to Miguel Ángel González Dávila vs. Leavander Johnson in '94, and won via SD. The "battle of little cobras" would be a hell of a sweet find if footage turns up online...and considering the card aired on Box Azteca, there's cause for hope. There's gotta be somebody that has a home-taped copy on VHS, somewhere...
I'll tell you an anecdote: In the early 00's, just after 9/11, I watched him fight on TV here in Phoenix. The fight was at the Civic Plaza so while I was watching, I called all the hotels near it to see where he was staying. We found out where he was staying and headed there after the fight. We waited until we saw a group of people with jackets with his name on it come out and I asked his brother if I could meet him, like I usually do with boxers when the meeting took place at a hotel. Usually I met someone from the boxer's personnel if not the boxer themselves and the meeting was set up. Well, anyways, the brother told me that he had just left for the airport. The airport happened to be only ten minutes away by car and in fact the hotel was directly under the landing path. You could see airplanes landing from the hotel by looking up. Anyways, he told me the flight number and we headed there, me with my boxing glove and my Sharpie. We passed the first bomb detecting machine, but when we got to the Aeromexico gate's restricted area, I guess he had already passed before us because we waited and waited and waited, til the plane left and we did not see him. What a shame! His brother, though, that very nice to us. I heard his brother or son was murdered. i felt sad when i heard that.
Yes I've been wanting to find his fight with Cesar Soto as well as his fights with Louie Espinoza and Manuel Medina.
I used to have his fight with Espinoza on vcr tape. I saw him sparring for that fight and had an autographed picture. I also Espinoza spar in preparation for the same fight and got some really good pictures from ringside.
The upset of Kelly was huge as Kelly was hyped and nobody outside of Mexico knew who Gonzales was. The WBC was known for pushing obscure fighters into title fights but this guy could fight.
His son, good little fighter who dropped Carl Frampton twice in the 1st round in a World title challenge. Nice right hand. Real shame. This content is protected This content is protected
Its so sad and heartbreaking. I always said that violence in Mexico is horrible but when it comes down to percentages, just like Puerto Rico is percentage-wise more likely to produce world champions, baseball players and Miss Universes, Puerto Rico is actually worse. In fact , percentage wise, many countries are statistically worse. But when you have 130 million residents and many hold regional rivalries with people of their own city and other cities as well, this kind of thing does and will happen. Tragically.
Thanks for bringing him up, @Flo_Raiden! His fight with Kelley was one of the absolute best of the 1990s and I think my own FOTY for 1995, which had some pretty good ones. I’ll be on the hunt for the Soto fight now as well.
Gonzalez, when speaking about his two fights with Luisito Espinosa, had one of my all time favorite boxing quotes. I'm paraphrasing but it went like this: "in our first fight I saw him make a mistake in the first round. When he made the same mistake in the second round, I stopped him. In our second fight I was waiting for him to make that mistake again, but he saw me waiting for it, and that was my mistake and he stopped me."
