Chocolatito Goes for Four: How Does His Pursuit Weigh Up?

By Cliff Rold

This Saturday night on HBO (10 PM EST/PST), lineal flyweight king Roman Gonzalez (45-0, 38 KO) moves into his fourth professional weight class to challenge undefeated WBC super flyweight titlist Carlos Cuadras (35-0-1, 27 KO). It looks like a hell of a fight on paper between a pair of men still in their 20s. Should Gonzalez win, he’ll become the seventeenth fighter to win titles in that many classes (sans interim titles that were never elevated a la Robert Guerrero) and the first from his native Nicaragua.

That storyline has received its share of coverage this week. Nicaraguan great Alexis Arguello mentored Gonzalez in his youth. The late Arguello famously fell short of becoming the first fighter to win titles in four weight classes at the hands of Aaron Pryor. The student, at least statistically, has a chance to surpass the teacher.

Gonzalez would be only the second fighter to win titles across the particular span he is attempting, 105 to 115 lbs., joining Venezuela’s Leo Gamez. Gamez held WBA belts at varying times in each of those four divisions between 1988 and 2001.

It will be an accomplishment if Gonzalez wins and is still an ‘if.’ Cuadras is a serious opponent with amateur pedigree and a moving style that represents a real threat to Gonzalez.

The questions posed here are simple: how much of an accomplishment would it be? And how much of a relative challenge is the rise from 105 to 115 lbs.?

Winning titles in four weight classes isn’t easy.

It’s a lot easier to do in the last thirty years.

How do we know that?

We know that because everyone who has done it has done so in the last thirty years. Prior to Tommy Hearns defeating Juan Roldan for the vacant WBC middleweight belt in 1987, no fighter had ever won titles in more than three divisions. By the end of the 1980s, Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran would match Hearns. The club has grown less exclusive with each passing year since, making room for unremarkable battlers like Gamez, Jorge Arce, and Adrien Broner alongside surefire Hall of Fame candidates like Roy Jones, Manny Pacquiao, and Floyd Mayweather.

Hearns didn’t stop at four, nor did Leonard, De La Hoya, Pacquiao, or Mayweather. What changed?

Two critical changes made it easier to add belts in multiple weight classes and both are easy to identify. The first is that boxing began adding more weight classes as regular parts of the equation. Divisions like Jr. featherweight, Jr. lightweight, and Jr. welterweight can be traced, with varying levels of depth, as far back as the 1920s and 30s under the Walker Laws, only to fade from the stage. They started to make a strong comeback in the late 1950s and 1960s and more classes were added along the way.

Along with more divisions, there are more opportunities in the modern era for titles. When Arguello was coming up, there were two major titles to chase (WBA, WBC). By the end of the 1980s, there were four (WBA, WBC, IBF, WBO).

Gonzalez attempting to be only the second man to win titles from 105 to 115 lbs. is a product of a 105 lb. division birthed only in 1987. Outside flyweight, the oldest of the classes Gonzalez has won titles in to date is Jr. flyweight, dating to 1975. The first modern 115 lb. champion was crowned in 1980.      

The explosion of weight classes and belts has allowed, in many cases, for fighters to capture belts without facing the top of each class they compete in. That’s true for some of the most and least notable. De La Hoya’s first title (WBO) came against Jimmy Bredahl at 130 lbs., a fighter not rated in the top half of Ring Magazine’s top ten in the class at the time. Broner won his fourth at 140 lbs. in 2015. For context, that came against a Khabib Allakhverdiev who hadn’t fought in more than a year off a loss. Arce won belts at 115 and 118 against an Angky Angkotta no one would have considered as near the top of either class.

Gonzalez’s first three titles feature one gimme’ so far, winning an interim title at 108 lbs. against Francisco Rosas that was elevated to full recognition during his reign. He’d already previously, and fairly easily, defeated Rosas in a majority decision on the road that might have been unanimous anywhere other than Rosas’s home turf. Rosas was not a remarkable competitor.     

This isn’t uncommon. Pretty much everyone who falls into the four or more club since 1987 has some belts they added on along the way against lesser opposition, someone who didn’t qualify as the best in a particular class, or both.

Still, that doesn’t make it easy.

The majority of the sixteen men who have won titles in four or more classes so far are already in the Hall of Fame or headed there on a first ballot rocket. Fighters still celebrate winning belts for a reason. Not everyone gets the chance. Winning them is the surest path to economic growth available in the game. Winning them in multiple classes maintains cache.

Gonzalez is arguably already a Hall of Famer. If Gonzalez wins this weekend, he’ll likely lock up that first ballot rocket for himself with any remaining skeptics.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be skeptics about the divisions he competes in. It is not uncommon for some to scoff at the idea of the three-pound increases between four of the five weight classes from 105 to 118 lbs.

Is that an informed approach?

Comparing lighter weights to heavier ones isn’t as easy as comparing the pounds measured on the scale. What sanctioning bodies took into some account in setting modern weight limits, and what is more telling, is the percentage of body weight a fighter is putting on as they move up. What is the equivalent of what Gonzalez is attempting in higher classes?

That can be measured in simple math.

Hearns won his first four titles at 147, 154, 175, and 160 lbs. He later added a fifth belt at 168 before returning to 175 (light heavyweight) for a second title in the class. From 147 to 175, we’re talking about a body weight increase of approximately 16%. 105 to 115 lbs. is a jump of approximately 9% in comparison. Gonzalez could win titles in two more weight classes, 118 and 122, and still only have increased his weigh-in body weight about 14%.

So winning titles from 147 to 175, currently across five divisions, is statistically tougher than winning them in six from 105 to 122. The numbers get closer lower on the scale.

While some might poke fun at winning titles from 105 to 115, they wouldn’t do the same for a fighter winning them from 122 to 135 lbs. or from 126 to 140, Arguello’s failed effort. That’s Jr. featherweight to lightweight, or featherweight to Jr. welterweight. Both measure at about a 10% increase in body weight, only marginally different than what Gonzalez is attempting here.

An attempt at four divisions gets tougher when the start point is 130 lbs. For fighters like De La Hoya and Mayweather, each of whom won their first four titles from 130 to 147 lbs., Gonzalez would have to win not only this weekend but also snare a title in a fifth division, bantamweight, to equal what were approximately 12% increases in body weight.

These are things that viewers in the moment, and history buffs down the road, can take into account when measuring the accomplishments Gonzalez has attained and could add as he continues. More important than the number of belts, or the percentage of body mass he packs on, will be his opponents. So far Gonzalez is carving a nice place for himself.

Yutaka Niida was widely regarded as the top man at Strawweight when Gonzalez defeated him. Akira Yaegashi was the lineal flyweight king, traceable to the reign of Miguel Canto. Three men Gonzalez has defeated (Katsunari Takayama, Francisco Rodriguez, and Juan Francisco Estrada) have gone on to be unified titlists in their divisions after facing him. Cuadras is rated currently no worse than second in an increasingly exciting 115 lb. class. Should Gonzalez defeat him, a possible rematch with Estrada or unification showdown with Naoya Inoue would both be highly attractive showdowns.     

If Gonzalez keeps winning at 115, the lure of even higher divisions and paychecks will be there. Perhaps one possibility could be the winner of the Shinsuke Yamanaka-Anselmo Moreno rematch at 118 if they are still around into 2017 or 2018. Less far fetched by the division, though father time could rule it out, is an eventual showdown with 122 lb. champion Guillermo Rigondeuax. Quality opponents, and victories, are what add the real value to a fighter’s willingness to move up the scale.

The potential for both are there for Gonzalez.

For now, the man they call “Chocolatito” has his hands full just going for title number four.

Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com