By Eric Baldwin: #2 WBC challenger Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (42-4-1, 38 KOs) used his superior size and punching power to defeat previously unbeaten WBC super flyweight champion Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez (46-1, 38 KOs) by a 12 round majority decision on Saturday night on HBO pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The judges scored the fight 114-112, 114-112 for Rungvisai and 114-114 even. Boxing News 24 scored the fight in favor of Rungvisai by 8 rounds to 4. Gonzalez suffered a bad cut over his right eye in round 3 after banging heads with Rungvisai. The cut bled all throughout the fight. By the later rounds, Gonzalez’s right eye and the side of his head was badly swollen. It wasn’t as bad as it was in Gonzalez’s fight against Carlos Cuadras last September.
Rungvisai, 30, knocked Gonzalez down in round 1. The knockdown get the tone for the fight, as Rungvisai was taking the fight to Gonzalez through most of the fight. Gonzalez tended to fight in spurts in the last minute of every round, but he was taking a lot of punishment through.
Gonzalez seemed to wear down in the last three rounds of the fight in rounds 10 through 12. Gonzalez had nothing left in the tank. Rungvisai did a good job of using movement and quick left-right combinations to catch the tired Gonzalez.
In round 6, Rungvisai lost a point for a clash of heads with Gonzalez. Rungvisai had been banging heads with Gonzalez all throughout the fight. The point deduction was the result of all the head-butts that were initiated accidentally by Rungvisai.
In rounds 4 through 6, Gonzalez came on strong in taking the fight to Rungvisai. Gonzalez outworked Rungvisai in those rounds, but his punching power had no real effect on the Thailand fighter. The shots bounced off of Rungvisai due to him being so much bigger. The only thing that seemed to give Rungvisai any problems was when Gonzalez started to throw to the body. The body shots did damage.
In round 7, Gonzalez let his foot off the accelerator and let Rungvisai control the round with his high workrate. This was a big mistake on Gonzalez’s part, because he took a lot of bad punishment in that round. Rungvisai has such heavy hands. He was landing some thudding shots that had Gonzalez looking worn out by the end of the round.
In rounds 8 and 9, Gonzalez seemed to get the better of Rungvisai with his attacking style. However, Rungvisai still landed a lot of heavy shots that made the rounds a toss-up.
Gonzalez had nothing left in the final three rounds, as Rungvisai took control over the fight and cruised to victory.
Gonzalez really needs to think twice about fighting Rungvisai again, because he’s too small to be fighting a guy as big as him. Rungvisai hits too hard and he’s too much of a size advantage for Gonzalez to beat him in a rematch. Cuadras was able to beat Rungvisai by using and hit and move style of fighting. Cuadras wasn’t going to try and stand in front of Rungvisai and trade because he realized how strong the guy was. What’s interesting is that Cuadras predicted that Rungvisai would beat Gonzalez, and he was right.
