By Dan Ambrose: 34-year-old #5 WBC super featherweight contender Jhonny Gonzalez (61-10, 51 KOs) defeated journeyman Christopher Martin (29-8-3, 9 KOs0 by a 10 round stoppage last Saturday night at the Deportivo Agustín Ramos Millan in Toluca, Mexico. Gonzalez knocked the 29-year-old Martin down in round five and ten.
The bout was halted after the 10th by Martin’s corner. For Martin, this was his sixth defeat in his last eight fights dating back to October of 2013. Gonzalez looked sluggish and heavy in the fight. He does not seem to be carrying the extra weight well since moving up to super featherweight.
Gonzalez had more problems beating Martin than Gary Russell Jr. and Julian Ramirez both did. They totally dominated Martin. Gonzalez was getting hit constantly, and many of the rounds were highly competitive with Martin giving him pure headaches.
Gonzalez also had Martin in trouble in the 8th round after hurting him with a left hook. Gonzalez flurried on Martin after trapping him against the ropes. However, Gonzalez was throwing weak arm shots and not loading up on his punches with enough power to get Martin out of there. Martin landed a hard right hand at point that almost knocked Gonzalez off balance, because he had forgotten all about his defense in thinking that Martin was ready to be knocked out.
Despite Gonzalez getting the victory, he looked slow and sluggish in the fight. It doesn’t look like Gonzalez belongs at super featherweight, because he’s not the fighter that he was when he was fighting featherweight, super bantamweight and bantamweight. Gonzalez doesn’t’ look nearly as good at super featherweight compared to when he was fighting in the lower weight classes. Some of that could be age though. Gonzalez is about to turn 35 in September, and it’s asking a lot of a fighter that age to be able to move up to super featherweight and do well like he’d done in the past at 118, 122 and 126.
I don’t think Gonzalez will do well if he gets in the ring with WBC super featherweight champion Francisco Vargas, or against someone like Orlando Salido or Vasyl Lomachenko. Those fighters are able to fight at a fast pace, and they would have too much for a guy with a slow pace like Gonzalez. It would be a mismatch in my view. Gonzalez fights too slowly to be able to beat those guys. If Gonzalez were smart, he’d lose some weight and go back down to featherweight or better yet, down to super bantamweight where his power would be more pronounced.
This was Gonzalez’s third straight victory since losing to Jonathan Oquendo by a 10 round majority decision last year in September. Gonzalez lost his WBC World featherweight title to Gary Russell Jr. by a 4th round knockout in March of 2015. Russell Jr. knocked Gonzalez down three times in the fight in putting him down once in the third and two more times in round four. Since that loss, Gonzalez has four fights against lower level opposition and lost to the aforementioned Oquendo.
In other action on last night’s card, former IBF junior middleweight belt holder Carlos Molina (26-6-2, 8 KOs) had to struggle to defeat journeyman Javier Prieto (27-9-2, 20 KOs) by an unimpressive eight round split decision. Surprisingly, Molina was getting outworked by Prieto and doing too much holding and wrestling on the inside. If Molina would have let his hands go without the constantly grabbing, he might have made this an easier fight. The final judges’ scores were 77-75 for Prieto, and 78-74 and 77-75 for Molina.
For Molina this was his fourth consecutive victory since his 12 round unanimous decision loss to Cornelius Bundrage in October 2014. Molina lost his IBF 154lb title with that defeat. A lot has changed since then at 154. Molina is no longer ranked in the top 15 by any of the sanctioning bodies, and the 43-year-old Bundrage is now just a fringe contender after getting destroyed by the hard hitting Jermall Charlo in three rounds last September.
It’s hard to see the 33-year-old Molina being able to come back and become a major player in the junior middleweight division at this point. Molina has his 15 minutes of fame as the IBF 154lb belt holder from 2013 to 2014, but now it looks like he doesn’t have a place in the division among the top guys. In other words, I don’t see Molina as having the talent to compete against the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, Erislandy Lara or even Liam Smith.