By Dan Ambrose: 34-year-old former two division world champion Jhonny Gonzalez (60-10, 50 KOs) will be fighting this month on June 18 against journeyman Christopher Martin (29-7-3, 9 KOs) in 10 round fight at the Deportivo Agustin Ramos Millan, in Toluca, Mexico.
Gonzalez is trying to ramp up for another world title shot after losing to Jonathan Oquendo and Gary Russell Jr. last year in 2015 in disappointing losses. Gonzalez was destroyed in four rounds by Russell Jr. and beaten by Oquendo by a 10 round majority decision. Since those fights, Gonzalez has won his last two bouts against Hurricane Futa and Justin Savi.
This has been Gonzalez’s pattern during his long 17-year pro career. Gonzalez will win a title, make a few success defenses, then get beaten and then fight six easy opponents until he gets another title shot. The problem that Gonzalez has this time is he’s 34, and fighting in a very solid super featherweight division.
There aren’t any flawed champions right now in this weight class for Gonzalez to pick up a title against at this time. I don’t think Gonzalez can beat WBC super featherweight champion Francisco Vargas, or WBA champs Jezreel Corrales and Javier Fortunate. IBF champion Jose Pedraza and WBO belt holder Roman “Rocky” Martinez are all probably too good for Gonzalez. Martinez would a potential champion Gonzalez could beat, but he’ll likely lose his WBO title this Saturday night against Vasyl Lomachenko.
I don’t see Gonzalez having any chance of ever beating Lomachenko, and I would hope for his sake that he never attempts to fight him. Gonzalez would be better off moving back down to featherweight or better yet, super bantamweight, because those are the only divisions I think he would have a chance of winning a belt. He’s too old and too easy to hit for him to beat the current super featherweight champions in my view. That doesn’t mean that Gonzalez won’t be able to get some nice money fights in this weight class.
I can see Gonzalez being a good useful opponent for the champions. I just don’t know how many more chances he’ll get to fight for titles. You’ve got to figure that it takes Gonzalez roughly two or three years to ramp up each time he gets beaten. So if that pattern stays that way, we won’t see Gonzalez fighting for another world title until 2017 or 2018. He’ll be 36 or 37 that point. That’s not young for the super featherweight division.
Martin, 29, is a decent journeyman fighter with five defeats in his last seven fights. Martin is clearly struggling at this point in his career. Martin’s career was going smoothly up until 2011, when he was beaten by journeyman Jose Angel Baranza. It’s been all downhill since then for Martin with him losing to Luis Orlando Del Valle, Enrique Ouevedo, Miguel Marriaga, Gary Russell Jr., Daniel Roman and Julian Ramirez. The positive news to get from these defeats is that Martin has only been beaten by good fighters. The negative thing to see in the losses is that he’s now losing almost all the time.
Gonzalez’s loss to Oquendo last year suggests that he’s no longer a major player. When you get to the level where you can’t beat simple contenders like Oquendo, then that suggests that you’re not a major player at super featherweight. Gonzalez might want to start thinking about an exit strategy for his boxing career.