By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten World Boxing Council flyweight champion Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, (46-0, 38 KOs) successfully moved up in weight to defeat the MUCH bigger and heavier WBC super flyweight champion Carlos “Principe” Cuadras (35-1-1, 27 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision to capture his WBC 115lb title on Saturday night on HBO Championship Boxing from The Forum in Inglewood, California.
The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 116-112, and 115-113.
The Mexican Cuadras often appeared to be running from Gonzalez, and that probably didn’t endear him to the three judges. The crowd was on Cuadras’ side, but they couldn’t force him to stand and trade. It was a strange site for the much, much bigger Cuadras to be running and holding to try and keep off the smaller Gonzalez. It made for a strange image inside the ring.
Gonzalez suffered a badly swollen right eye that was close to closing by the end of the fight. The left side of his face and eyes were swollen as well. Cuadras suffered a cut under his right eye in round nine from a left hook from Gonzalez. Other than that, Cuadras looked unmarked.
With his superior hand speed and combination punching ability, Gonzalez was chasing Cuadras around the ring the entire fight, forcing him to fight when he didn’t want to. Cuadras would usually throw wild haymakers that would miss badly when he was trapped by Gonzalez. Cuadras would then either hold in a clinch or continue running. It just looked really bad like Cuadras didn’t have the faith that he could beat Gonzalez in a toe-to-toe battle.
I had Gonzalez winning eight rounds to four. Cuadras, 28, totally ran out of gas in the second half of the fight, and spent the last six rounds holding and running. It was pure spoiling from Cuadras. He would fight hard for the first half of each round, and then spend the second half of the rounds holding and running. It was hard for me to give Cuadras more than one round after the 5th.
I thought Cuadras did well in the first five rounds, but he was spent after that point. Cuadras even had a hard time getting off the stool. He was just a tired fighter, and you could understand because the guy looked like a lightweight in the ring tonight after he rehydrated. Taking all that weight off to make weight and then putting it back had to make Cuadras feel sluggish.
Gonzalez is now the WBC super flyweight champion. He might want to think about moving back down to the flyweight division, because the fighters in this division are huge. He’s better at flyweight, because he doesn’t deal with huge fighters like Cuadras, who arguably should be fighting at featherweight instead of draining down to fight at super flyweight.