Jogre Luiz Gonzalez

i followed JLG's career . he could look pretty awesome against the usual suspects and faded contenders. gave renaldo snipes a career ending beating and taunted him all the way,which was really unnessessary as snipes had always been a gutsy guy. suppose a lot of fans were happy to see his humiliation by bowe,there was bad blood between the two of them,possibly from the amatuer days. witherspoon also gave JLG a good hiding,so did big ross puritty,who made him quit. JLG did have a few decent wins,greg page,although past it,was still reasonable performer,and alex stewart,who was pretty much beaten to a pulp in impressive fashion. JLG was mentioned as an opponent for tyson after the stewart win but nothing ever came of it. in the end he was stopped by the ordinary cliff couser,joe mesi and derek bryant. a fine amatuer but ill disciplined and too old to change his many bad habits. plus points- a powerful jab,when he used it,a bolo-like uppercut and a great look,like a huge genie. a dissapointment,but better than audley harrison.

 

JLG looked pretty good as a semi pro fighting the johnny come latley's, but as soon as he stepped up in comp his limitations were showing BIG. Then came 1995 and the day he got his lesson course in the difference between amature boxing and the pro's oddly enough by Riddick Bowe himself. JLG was never the same again.

 

...............The kind of fighter I love to hate.

He acted as if he had some title coming to him simply by way of his amateur pedigree, and took too much pride and was too oafish in behavior over what were little more than glorified sparring sessions (e.g., the Snipes fight). He got what was coming to him when Bowe handed him his head, and later Witherspoon. I enjoyed those fights.

 

Gonzalez had an arrogance that plagues many amateur standouts. They have the belief that they were so extraordinary as an amateur that they essentially had nothing else to learn about boxing. Gonzalez was quite stubborn when it came to this respect.

 

Nice summary.

 

I have heard through the rumor mill that Gonzalez was difficult to train as a pro. Supposedly he was arrogant and uncooperative towards his trainers.

According to the rumors, Gonzalez felt that his amateur pedigree gave him everything he needed to know to succeed as a pro. Allegedly he wouldn't listen to his pro trainers.

I don't know if the rumors are true.

 

Perfect example of a promising amateur becoming a dissapointing Pro......Gonzalez and Shabalabba one in the same..........................The reason being is an amatuer fight gets stopped a lot quicker and an amateur fighter give up quicker..

 

I still see Gonzales and spoke to him of sorts only a few months ago in Las Vegas, he has lost tonnes of weight and is very skinny now but dresses immaculately.. He was a great BAD man , he was employed by MGM Events manager Dennis Frinfrock as MGM house heavyweight along with an ex convict called Johnathon Banks.. In fact as an amateur he beat Lewis and Bowe in the pan ames in the same weekend. He beat some decent names including Renaldo Snires on the Bowe v Holyfied 2 card.. Nice man but could be very theatrical and once slapped a young Shannon Briggs , knocking Shannon off his feet in the MGM entrance for actually offering Jorge good luck for the Bowe Fight , saying Briggs was getting too fresh... Good memories..

 

the build-up towards the fight against Bowe as hilarious

shame we never got to see a lot of him after that

 

i remember when he turned pro in the early 90´s.

to me, he was the typical (at the time) standout amateur who just flopped as a pro.

i always believed it had to do with the old amateur style, where the fighters were taught to stand up stiff as a board, paw with the left and follow up with the right hand.
ducking under punches was illegal (as it appears to sometimes be in some euro countries today).

these amateurs always had a tendency to keep their chin right up in the air. so all you basically had to was duck under their right hands and come up with the left hook.
eventually, you´d hit paydirt.

jorge luis gonzales was a typical example of that. all these guys knew what to do when an opponent got close was hold on. they didnt have a clue on infighting.

gonzales may have had a better chance had he gone pro earlier. but he basically remained and amateur when he turned pro. and that undid him real quick.

i remember an ambitious clubfighter by the name of josh dempsey who totally dominated gonzales by forcing him to fight in close. he was way ahead on points when he ran into a flush shot in the last round and got stopped.

the reasons i mentioned above for gonzales pro failiurs are the same that lead me to believe that the great theofelio stevenson would not have made it all the way in the pros by the way.

 

b.d.j

i agree that the old amateur style of keeping behind that jab and then throwing a straight right hand...really over-asperating the 'BOXING' part and not enough inside fighting...i'm not so sure about your reasoning for Stevenson though. for not being a good pro. Stevenson was a stand up boxer but he was known for looking for fights. he had a left uppercut for the inside and wasnt as one dimensional as Gonzalez. thats a reason why he dominated Bobick when less than a year before bobick was able to whip stevenson. he just threw the one-two then launched a left hook on the inside...Bobick could'nt get out of the way of it.

anyways different thread.

 

I remember reading a long article on JLG prior to his fight with Bowe.

The article made a big deal of the fact that Riddick was intimidated by Gonzalez. Part of this presumably came from the amateur beating.

Apparently, there was some chat show where the host told Riddick that JLG would be joining them and Bowe was panicking because he was still scared!

Anyhow, Bowe fixed him up in the ring when they finally met - and as everyone has pointed out there is no comparison between amateur and pro boxing. Bowe was an undeveloped kid when he first fought Gonzalez.

Unlike Gonzalez he learned his trade properly as a young pro.

 

great post, nice work:good

 

I never particularly cared for Gonzalez myself, nor was I ever really impressed by him. I remember watching the Holyfield-Bowe rematch of November 1993, and Gonzalez fighting Renaldo Snipes on the undercard. Gonzalez taunted and laughed at Snipes for most of the evening before a 10 round stoppage occurred. From that point, I wanted to see the man lose. Not long after, Riddick Bowe handed him his lunch, and a few years later, I watched Terrible Tim beat the livin' crap out of him. That was basically it for Gonzalez. Apparently Fidel Castro never like Gonzalez because he beat an aging Teofilo Stevenson, but that's just something I either heard or read at some point over the years.