Fourteen weeks out from his fight with Yankiel Rivera, Jonathan Gonzalez was sitting on his bed in Caguas, Puerto Rico thinking about how best to prepare for the fight.
At 34 years old, and walking around at 135lbs, it wasn’t getting any easier to cut down to the flyweight limit of 112lbs while maintaining his strength and stamina.
He had hired nutritionists in the past, but, with advances in technology in the 15 years since he turned pro, he decided to see if artificial intelligence could help him get started. Previously, he had only used ChatGPT for less consequential tasks, like writing the perfect Instagram caption. This time, he began typing in prompts to inquire about how he should begin to adjust his diet. What he got in return was detailed feedback from the app on what he should be eating to cut his weight down in a healthy, sustainable way.
“It sent me some great menus for breakfast and lunch, like ‘Yo, eat this, four ounces of chicken, four ounces of pechuga [chicken breast]. I asked it, ‘Can I eat a pizza?’ It said, ‘No, you can't eat a pizza. Pizza's gonna retain water. It has 360 calories, and then, every time you run one mile, you can only go down 100 calories, you know?’ I've been learning a lot from that,” said “Bomba” Gonzalez, 29-4-1 (14 KOs).
Artificial intelligence is just that; there is no live expert on the other end giving expert advice. The ChatGPT itself warns at the bottom of their page, "ChatGPT is AI and can make mistakes."
Still, the app and others like it can simplify the process of independent research, pulling from different sources to provide relevant information.
Gonzalez, who had previously hired nutritionists for several hundred dollars in consulting fees, decided to try out this free option. He would send in his weights every Sunday, as if he was consulting with a hired nutritionist, and keep the app up to date about what his training and track work output was like.
The feedback he’d get was helpful - drink more water, eat something different.
More than just giving him strategies for getting down to flyweight, Gonzalez says the experience changed the way he viewed nutrition and weight-cutting overall.
“Every boxer, I'm including myself, thinks that water will make you heavier. Water is not weight, it's momentary. You go to the bathroom, you sweat, you'll go down weight. But these boxers just think that water is gonna fuck their weight up. And that's not true. I drink a gallon of water daily until a week before the weigh-in,” said Gonzalez.
“You have to maintain your protein to the last week of the fight. If you don't eat protein in your training camp, you’re going into the fight empty. You're gonna get tired. You're not gonna have energy like you're supposed to. I was doing daily up to 145 grams of protein with everything, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Plus, I was drinking two scoops every day of protein.”
Gonzalez continued following the suggestions from ChatGPT. He lost 2-3 pounds a week while he drank one gallon of water per day up until the Monday before their January 3 meeting at Coliseo Roberto Clemente in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Past camps would see Gonzalez - like many boxers - trapped inside a plastic sauna suit in extreme measures to get to fighting weight. This time around, he only used it early into fight week, just to temporarily remove water weight that he would put back on during rehydration.
The experiment seemed to pay off when he outboxed the younger Rivera. Gonzalez floored his fellow Boricua in the 2nd round and repeatedly hurt him en route to a unanimous decision win.
The win earned Gonzalez the WBA interim flyweight title, which put him in position for another major fight at 112lbs.
For Gonzalez, who had held the WBO junior flyweight title from 2021 until 2024, the victory also offered vindication. The aged veteran defeated a previously unbeaten Olympian in what was Gonzalez’s first fight in over a year, after his disappointing first round stoppage loss to Anthony Olascuaga for the WBO flyweight title in October of 2024. Gonzalez showed that he was - and still is - a world class fighter.
Beyond that, he says he felt “super happy” throughout training camp, which isn’t always a given for someone suddenly living a very restrictive lifestyle.
What the future holds next for Gonzalez is still to be written. But Gonzalez at least feels confident that he isn’t struggling by himself while making weight.
“I'm 34, I can't be looking around for opportunities or what's gonna happen. I'm just waiting for what will happen in a couple of weeks. I'm 34 but I have two or three fights more in my body,” said Gonzalez.
“Right now I’m walking around at 125. I want to stay there, I don’t want to push my body that much for the next training camp, it’ll be better. If this training camp was great, I want to see the next one.”
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.
