As a teenager buying up every magazine on the stands, I was bombarded with stories hyping Gato Gonzalez as the next great lightweight. I don't believe any of his fights were televised until his title fight against Claude Noel and I was shocked at how ordinary and pedestrian he looked against a guy he was supposed to stop without much trouble. I know he had a life and death war with Andy Ganigan that is supposed to be an all-time great war of attrition right before his fight with Noel. Was this fight that brutal that it left him shopworn that young or was he really a hot and cold fighter not worthy of the hype from the beginning? I'm really curious to hear from those who saw more of him than I did and were old enough to have a realistic judgment at the time. Thanks in advance....
Amazingly, Gato would go on to have two title shots six and seven years later at 140, and lose both of them.I remember when the mags were kinda hyping him up at the time.Shame he didn't win his title shots.
He was one of those guys who came up blowing guys away early in fights ala Jose "The Threat" Baret. Shortly before the Gainigan fight he knocked out a shopworn Vilomar Fernandez. "Experts" probably read way too much into him doing something Arguello couldn't. I tend to think he probably maximised his potential and was just overhyped.
I remember his fight with Ganigan, who was one of my favorite fighters at the time. I wasn't able to go to the fight but they gave the result on the 10pm local news, and then showed it a week later.
It's a great question and I too was sold on Gato Gonzales being the next big thing. He probably got overhyped as a pure puncher, as Natonic wisely recollected, because of his KO2 of Fernandez. When I finally got to see him, he didn't present as a great athlete or particularly fluid and was outslicked by Claude Noel for the title. He had a nasty car accident, retired briefly, and then came back to upset Rene Arredondo on a split decision- a fight I saw on a Spanish network while in college in Texas. That win gave him another spin at the top.
