After an eight-year wait, Juan Francisco Estrada will get his shot at redemption Saturday night in Dallas.
Yet even with his rematch against Roman Gonzalez fast approaching, Estrada can’t help but think he deserved more credit than he received on the scorecards in their first fight. Gonzalez won a 12-round unanimous decision in their 108-pound championship match in November 2012, but the margins by which the judges favored Gonzalez are what Estrada questions.
Judge Barry Druxman scored 10 of the 12 rounds for Gonzalez, who won 118-110 on his card. Judges Steve Morrow (116-112) and Fritz Werner (116-112) scored eight rounds apiece for Gonzalez, who retained his WBA light flyweight title at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.
“They gave the decision to Roman Gonzalez, a unanimous decision,” Estrada said. “But I still felt happy with the great fight I fought and thanks to that, great things came for me. I think they gave a lot of points to Roman. I think it should have been a closer fight in terms of the judges’ [scores], but that was the result, and we’ll leave it there. Actually, many people said that I won, but I was an unknown fighter. He was the best pound-for-pound fighter, so they could never give me the fight. A KO would have been the only way.”
Estrada, then 22 years old, moved down four pounds, from the flyweight limit of 112, to challenge Gonzalez in what was Estrada’s first world title fight.
The 30-year-old Estrada (41-3, 28 KOs) is 15-1 since Gonzalez (50-2, 41 KOs) beat him and has made two defenses of the WBC super flyweight title that he won from Srisaket Sor Rungvisai in April 2019. Thailand’s Sor Rungvisai (49-5-1, 42 KOs) is the only opponent to defeat Estrada since he lost to Gonzalez, but Estrada avenged that 12-round, majority-decision defeat in February 2018 by beating Sor Rungvisai by unanimous decision in their 12-round rematch for the WBC belt Sor Rungvisai took from Gonzalez two years earlier.
In addition to the WBC super flyweight title Estrada owns, he and Gonzalez will fight for Gonzalez’s WBA 115-pound crown in the main event of DAZN’s stream Saturday night from American Airlines Center (8 p.m. ET). Texas’ Jesse Reyes, Florida’s Carlos Sucre and Oklahoma’s David Sutherland are the three judges who’ve been assigned to score the Estrada-Gonzalez rematch.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
