By Dan Ambrose: In a predictable outcome, WBC featherweight champion Jhonny Gonzalez (57-8, 48 KOs) stopped a badly overmatched 35-year-old Jorge Arce (62-8-2, 49 KOs) in the 11th round last Saturday night at the Centro de Usos Multiples, Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico. Arce reportedly retired after the fight.
You have to wonder how long this retirement will last before he comes out of retirement again, because this isn’t the first time Arce has retired.
The stoppage was anticlimactic though with referee Johnny Callas stopping the fight in the 11th due to Arce not doing much other than circling the ring and taking occasional shots. It was a very strange stoppage because Arce was fine. He just wasn’t competitive. But the referee really could have stopped the fight after the 9th round when Arce was knocked down, because after that knockdown, Arce was playing it safe and not doing much.
Gonzalez knocked Arce down three times in the fight in dropping him in the 3rd, 5th and 9th with big shots. In between the knockdowns, Gonzalez fought like he was taking it easy on Arce. Gonzalez was in 1st gear the entire fight. Even in the case of the knockdowns, Gonzalez was still in first gear and it was a situation of Arce not being able to handle the Gonzalez’s power. This is a fight that could have ended easily 2 rounds if Gonzalez fought Arce the way he normally fights by going 100 percent, but this fight looked like an exhibition/sparring match where Gonzalez was mostly taking it easy on Arce.
Neither fighter did much of anything in the first 2 rounds, as they fought in slow motion, faking shots, and angering the crowd. Arce was cut over the bridge of his nose by of the few shots that Gonzalez threw in the 2nd.
In the 3rd round, Arce was knocked down by a hard left hook to the head by Gonzalez. Arce was also cut badly over his left eye in the round.
Arce mostly controlled the 4th round due to Gonzalez throwing absolutely nothing until the final seconds of the round. Gonzalez was really taking it easy on Arce in this round. On a number of occasions, Arce clashed heads with Gonzalez while rushing forward. This didn’t make Gonzalez too happy, especially near the end of the round when he finally unloaded on Arce with some meaningful shots following a hard head-butt from him.
In the final 15 seconds of the 5th round, Gonzalez dropped Arce hard with a right-left combination that put him down on his backside. Arce stayed down for a long time before finally getting to his feet. The round then ended at that point, and Arce staggered back to his corner. He looked really hurt, and he was fortunate the round ended when it did.
Gonzalez would have had to really back off if there was more time left in the round otherwise Arce would have been finished. That would have looked really bad if Gonzalez hadn’t gone for the KO with Arce out on his feet, but with the way this fight was fought, I think that’s what would have happened. Gonzalez probably would have let Arce survive rather than finish him.
It was all Gonzalez in the 6th round as Arce stayed on the outside and initiated nothing on his own. He kept tapping his gloves together to urge Gonzalez to come forward, but it was nothing but a bluff. Arce was still hurt from the previous round he looked terrible.
There was little action to speak of in the 7th round, as Gonzalez toyed with a tired looking Arce. At one point Gonzalez ran forward and put Arce in a wrestling head-lock and pushed him to the ropes while still holding him in a head-lock. It looked more like an MMA move than anything resembling a boxing match.
By the 8th round, Arce looked totally depleted. He attempted a left hook and spun completely around. The referee then warned Arce not to turn his back on Gonzalez. In the same round, Arce looked like he was ready to quit after he was hit by a right hand from Gonzalez on the side of the head. Arce stopped fighting and started complaining to the referee while holding the back of his head while telling him he’d been hit with a rabbit punch.
The referee wasn’t buying any of it because it was a perfectly legal punch to the side of the head. But for a moment there it looked like Arce was getting ready to quit like he did in his fight against Jesus Rojas in 2012 when he was hit on the ear and he wouldn’t get up off the canvas after going down. The crowd booed Arce loudly, and obviously they saw him looking for a way out. Near the end of the round, Gonzalez staggered Arce with a right to the head.
In the 9th round, Gonzalez dropped Arce with a left hook to the head. After Arce got back up, he complained bitterly to the referee. It seemed like he was saying he got kneed at the same time he was hit with a left hook. Whatever the case, the referee wasn’t buying it. After the knockdown, Arce kept tapping his gloves together to try and get Gonzalez to come forward, but he backed off like he had in the other rounds and let Arce survive. Only Gonzalez knows why he didn’t attempt to finish Arce off, because he was ready to be taken out at this time and there was plenty of time for Gonzalez to do it.
In the 11th, Arce was warned for spitting out his mouthpiece. He’d done this earlier in the fight, but this time the referee was getting tired of it and gave Arce a stern warning. After his mouthpiece was put back in, Arce danced around on the side of the ring until the referee stopped the fight after he took a couple of meaningless right hands from Gonzalez. It was a very strange stoppage because Arce was still fighting. It was just that he wasn’t competitive. The referee should have stopped the fight much earlier if his argument was that it wasn’t competitive.
Other boxing results on the card:
Adrian Estrella UD 12 Celestino Caballero
Adrian Young pts 8 Edgar Monarrez
Mahonri Montes pts 8 Diego Cruz
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