By Dan Ambrose: Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez will challenge WBA super flyweight champion Juan Francisco Estrada on March 5th in a trilogy match at the Pechanga Arena in San Diego, California.
This fight comes precisely 12 months since the last time the two squared off on March 13th in Dallas, Texas, in a battle that Estrada (42-3, 28 KOs) won by a highly controversial 12 round split decision.
The judges must have their eyes open this time because they can’t flub up the scoring for the March 5th Estrada vs. Gonzalez trilogy match due to what happened a year ago.
Estrada was heavily booed by the fans, who had initially been on his side before the action had started. The judges scored it:
- 115-113 – Estrada
- 117-111 – Estrada
- 115-113 – Chocolatito
Roman Gonzalez motivated for the trilogy
“Super motivated, very, very motivated,” said Roman Gonzalez to Fighthype about his trilogy match against Juan Estrada will be on March 5th.
“I want to thank God that I’m here in camp, and I’m really focused on this fight,” Chocolatito continued. “I’m extra motivated for this fight, but I’m just really focused to try and get that win on March 5th,” said Gonzalez.
The combination punching and the high work rate of Chocolatito will make it difficult for Estrada to win because he’s not capable of fighting like that.
What we could see is Estrada using movement and an in and out attacking style that he employed for his rematch with Srisaket Sor Rungvisai in April 2019.
Estrada would dash forward, land shots on the heavy-handed Rungvisai, and then flee before he had a chance to wind up to wallop him as he’d repeatedly done in their first fight in February 2018.
It’s questionable whether Estrada will find the same kind of success using a hit-and-run approach against Chocolatito as he had against the limited slugger Rungvisai, though.
Whether Estrada likes it or not, he’s probably going to need to go to war with Roman once again and hope that the year out of the ring has made him rusty enough to lower his high punch output.
Barring that, Estrada has very little chance of winning the trilogy apart from receiving another controversial decision from the judges. What we’ve seen from the first two fights is that Chocolatito has Estrada’s number, and that won’t change unless he’s aged or ring rusty.
Estrada will have it tough
“Anything can happen in boxing. There’s no opponent that is too small. You got to go in there super focused because anything can happen,” said Chocolatito when asked about Leo Santa Cruz’s tune-up bout against Keenan Carbajal on February 5th. “You got to be on your Ps and Qs,” said Gonzalez.
Depending on the scoring for the trilogy match between these two warriors, this fight will be the decider in which is the superior fighter.
With that said, Chocolatito (50-3, 41 KOs) is already overwhelmingly viewed as the better fighter than Estrada due to his conclusive 12 round decision victory in their first fight in 2012 and his dominating performance last year.
Dan Ambrose had Chocolatito winning the rematch by a 116-112 score, and that was with me giving Estrada a couple of rounds that could have gone the other way.