By Chet Mills: Making his fifth appearance since losing his WBO bantamweight championship to Gerry Penalosa last August, Jhonny Gonzalez (39-6, 33 KOs) took out Leivi Brea (16-7-3, 8 KOs) in the 1st round of a scheduled 8-round bout tonight at the Desert Diamond Casino, in Phoenix, Arizona. Gonzalez, 26, ended things with a left to the body of Brea near the end of the round. Referee Robert Ferrara then moved in and halted the bout at 2:47 of the 1st round.
Gonzalez started out slow in the 1st round, jabbing and looking cautious. Brea, from the Dominican Republic, jabbed and circled Gonzalez. Brea attempted to fire off some right hands but they were picked off by the gloves of Gonzalez. Slowly, Gonzalez worked himself in position on the inside and then fired off a big left hook to the body of Brea, knocking him to the canvas. He got up at the count of eight, still in visible pain from the body shot, but referee Robert Ferrara stopped the bout anyway. Brea looked as if he could have continued fighting, but the referee probably didn’t like the pained look in his face and decided against letting him fight on. It’s perhaps a good thing he didn’t allow him to continue fighting, because Gonzalez was just getting warmed up and no doubt would have finished him off with additional body shots.
This is Gonzalez’s fifth fight since losing his WBO bantamweight title last August, yet he still has shown no indication of wanting to step it up against top level competition again. His fight against Brea, a C-class fighter at best, was more of the same from Gonzalez. So far, he’s been stopping most of his over-matched opposition in one to four rounds and it’s doubtful that he can be getting much from the bouts other than padding for his record.
Sooner or later, he’s going to have to step it up against the top fighters in the super bantamweight division, where he’s currently ranked #3 in the WBA, #4 in the WBC and number #6 in the WBO. He has a tough task ahead of him if he hopes to beat any of the current champions – Israel Vazquez, Steve Molitor, Celestino Caballero and Juan Manuel Lopez. I doubt think he matches up well with any of them, and will very likely lose by knockout when the time comes for him to finally step it up again.
His best bet would seem for him to find some way to whittle his body back down to the bantamweight division where he formerly held two titles. The division is much weaker, and if he can make the weight, I give him an excellent chance of regaining one of his titles in a short period of time. However, he’s got to stop wasting time by fighting one 3rd tier fighter after another without stop.
I could understand it maybe if he had suffered a beating in his loss to Penalosa, and taken a lot of bad head shots. But that wasn’t the case. Gonzalez was stopped on a body shot, and was leading the fight at the time of the stoppage in the 7th round.