By Dan Ambrose: WBC flyweight champion Roman Gonzalez (44-0, 38 KOs) has what amounts to be a stay busy fight this Saturday night against Puerto Rico’s McWilliams Arroyo (16-2, 14 KOs) on the undercard of the Gennady Golovkin vs. Dominic Wade fight at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
While the promoters have tried to build the Gonzalez-Arroyo fight as a competitive one, it’s not going to be. Arroyo is huge step down from Gonzalez’s last opponent Brian Viloria, and about the only interesting thing about the fight is predicting when Gonzalez is going to get Arroyo out of there.
Gonzalez wants to headline his own fights after Saturday’s mismatch, but he’s going to need to make sure he’s fighting better opposition because he’s not going to please fans if he fights guys that are as out of their class as Arroyo is.
Arroyo’s claim to fame was losing to IBF World flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng by a 12 round split decision two years ago in 2014. It was a close fight but Arroyo clearly lost. What’s troubling is that Arroyo has fought only once since that fight in defeating journeyman Victor Ruiz last year by a 3rd round stoppage. With only one fight in the last two years, Arroyo is a poor option for Gonzalez.
Arroyo doesn’t deserve another world title fight, and it’s more than a little unfair to the fans that will be paying to see the card having a mismatch in the co-feature bout. The only good thing is that the card isn’t being sold on HBO PPV, because then it would be really bad because the main event is an even worse mismatch between Golovkin and Wade. When you have a poor match in the main event, it sometimes helps if the co-feaure is a good one. In this case, both the main event and co-feature fights are bad ones.
Arroyo is ranked #10 by the World Boxing Council. I have him Arroyo ranked out of the top 15. He’s clearly not good enough to be ranked in the top 15 when you select for the very best fighters at flyweight. Besides Arroyo’s loss to Amnat Ruenroeng, he’s also been beaten by Takashi Okada.
“McWilliams is a very good fighter. I have always said there is no weak opponent, every fighter is equal. I have prepared myself strong to give him a good fight,” Gonzalez said to Fightnews.com. “Just because the opponent is not well known does not make him less. I train hard for every boxer…I am ready to put on a great show and may the best man win.”
Arroyo’s main problem isn’t that he’s not well known. His major problem is he’s just not that good. That’s what it boils down to. Arroyo is an average fighter facing the best fighter in the sport right now in Gonzalez. But what makes things worse for Arroyo is that he’s not only average, but he’s ring rusty too. That’s not good.
Gonzalez says he wants to fight two more times at flyweight and then move up in weight to the super flyweight division. If he’s not going to fight someone really good like Juan Francisco Estrada or Ruenroeng, then he should move up to super flyweight right now so that he doesn’t wind up wasting his career fighting unworthy opponents that do nothing to increase his popularity.