By Dan Ambrose: 34-year-old former two division world champion Jhonny Gonzalez (60-10, 50 KOs) picked up an important win last Saturday night in stopping little known Justin Savis (28-5-2, 18 KOs) in the 2nd round of a scheduled 12 round fight at the Centro de Convenciones Tlanepantla in Mexico. Gonzalez knocked Savi down twice in the fight in putting him down in the 1st and 2nd round. The fight was halted after the second knockdown in the 2nd round.

Gonzalez came into the fight with two losses in his last four fights, and he was at a point where he couldn’t afford to get beaten again. That was obviously why the 31-year-old Savi was selected for Gonzalez because he was beatable, and someone that Gonzalez had little chance of losing to.

Savi came into the fight with three defeats in his last eight fights. He’d never beaten a top tier fighter, so Gonzalez was virtually safe from any threat of losing.

With the win, Gonzalez retains his WBC International Silver super featherweight title. Gonzalez lost his WBC featherweight title last year to Gary Russell Jr. by a 4th round knockout in March 2015. Later that year, Gonzalez was beaten by Jonathan Oquendo by a 10 round majority decision. After that loss, Gonzalez moved up to the super featherweight division and has won his last two fights against Hurricane Futa and Savi.

The super featherweight division is pretty stacked with talent. It’s hard to imagine Gonzalez being able to win a world title in this weight class, even with all the titles available to him to try and win a belt. At 34, Gonzalez has seen better days and he’s going to struggle to try and make something happen in this weight class. What Gonzalez can’t afford to do is to get stuck fighting a lot of weaker opposition like he’s done in the past.

Gonzalez has mostly wins over weak opponents during his 17-year pro career, and he cannot go back to fighting the 3rd tier fighters as he slowly reloads for another world title shot. Gonzalez is too old to go slow with his career like he’s done in the past. If he elects to fight weak opponents for three or four years before his next title shot, he’ll be nearing 40 and likely have zero chance of winning a title.

In other action on the card, former International Boxing Federation 154-pound champion Carlos Molina (25-6-2, 8 KOs) defeated Reyes Sanchez (26-8-2, 15 KOs) by an eight round unanimous decision. The final judges’ scores were 79-73, 78-74 and 80-72.

For the 32-year-old Molina, this was his third straight win since losing his IBF World junior middleweight title to Cornelius Bundrage by a 12 round unanimous decision in October 2014. Molina has been facing weak opposition since his loss to Bundrage, which would help explain why he’s only ranked at #12 by the WBC after two years since his loss.

If Molina wants to get ranked quickly, then he’s going to need to start fighting better opposition at some point. Molina doesn’t have the type of fighting style that would enable him to get selected by one of the champions for a voluntary defense.