A Long Short Night for Chocolatito

By Jimmy Tobin-

Saturday night, in the main event of HBO’s super flyweight tripleheader from StubHub Center in Carson, California, Wisaksil “Srisaket Sor Rungvisai” Wangek augured Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez into the canvas with a right hook so ill-intentioned and unsparing as to make superfluous the ritual tallying of seconds and scores alike. A third fight between Gonzalez’ and his conqueror became superfluous too in the long minutes between Gonzalez’ departure and return to consciousness. Even boxing’s most ambitious man is likely to appreciate the options that reroute him from another opportunity to settle a now lopsided score.

To be sure, Sor Rungvisai would hesitate not at all to share the ring a third time with what was, even a week ago, arguably boxing’s finest practitioner. For he is now Gonzalez’ fighting superior; and while this superiority he owes primarily to his size, vitality, power (attributes one must lobby hard to take credit for) there is more to him than physicality—Gonzalez, of course, has been beating bigger men for years.

What Sor Rungvisai brought was an irreverence both inherent and inherited: he forced an ugly fight with Gonzalez the first time, and having watched the scale of suffering tilt in his favor, set upon Gonzalez with greater fervor the second. After all, Sor Rungvisai too was fighting for vengeance, fighting to silence those who discredited his victory in March, and his performance reflected as much. He did not just dare the greatest offensive fighter of recent years to fight him, Sor Rungvisai demanded it, believing belligerence the key to victory.

And he was right, hence the smirk on Sor Rungvisai’s face when Gonzalez implored referee Tom Taylor to police the headbutts that again figured in the action. This plea told Sor Rungvisai there were questions his opponent could not answer—so he posed them mercilessly and relentlessly and boldly and ushered the Nicaraguan to his undoing. He is deserving then, of the accolades that should attend that unforgettable end.

Could it also be that Gonzalez suffered the fate that he deserved? Consider the bitterness of his first loss to Sor Rungvisai, the frustration born of scorecards, of an outcome taken out of the hands most deserving of delivering it. Consider too, Gonzalez’ understanding of the intimacy of the knockout, for the uncorrupted truth it reveals, that responsibility free of blame—might not a definitive ending then, however chilling, prove more satisfying to him?

Stretched on his back, looking skyward, Gonzalez was shown his ceiling as a fighter, and there is some nobility in that. Sor Rungvisai represented the culmination of a career of staggering ambition: Gonzalez was not finessed onto HBO and fed an army of no-hopers while a makeshift narrative about his greatness was conjured out of mediocrity—he is the genuine article, immune to the red hot revisions aimed to incinerate legacies in the aftermath of defeat. A middling end was never Gonzalez’ fate: the very nature of his career prevented it. He has now lost consecutive fights, yes, but there are no bad losses on his ledger, nor will there be any, given how undeniably Gonzalez has slipped. The signs were there before Sor Rungvisai, and after Sor Rungvisai expectations and evaluations will be forgiving. You are allowed to age when you leave no challenge unmet—and it is respect, not courtesy, that dictates as much.

Yet even if it is too early to eulogize Gonzalez’ career, he looked like no better than the fifth best fighter on the card, which means the division likely moves on without him or at his expense. But it will not do so in anonymity, and for that, Gonzalez deserves much credit. He, along with K2 Promotions, not only prompted the return of the flyweights to HBO’s airwaves he justified it. Yes, HBO now has an army of dragons guarding its gold, and the departure of Top Rank could be a sign that boxing at least as longtime subscribers have come to expect it is not long for the network. But the response to Superfly was strong, the arena sold out, and the action as good as anything HBO has offered in some time.

These are reasons then, to invest in the lower weights, and any pairing of the best of the card’s fighters (Juan Francisco Estrada, Carlos Cuadras, Naoya Inoue and of course, Sor Rungvisai) will meet the lofty expectations Saturday set. HBO may not care to bankroll as obvious a tournament as they could make, not when their stars have opponents comeback, showcase, and stay-busy alike to pay, but it is nearly impossible to imagine them not capitalizing on the very real enthusiasm Gonzalez engendered. And there is an important lesson to be gleaned from that: his career, conducted as if in adherence to a fighting romantic ideal, will leave both Gonzalez and boxing for the better. That so few are prepared to follow his lead only makes that message more endearing.

All of that time Saturday, from the ring to the gurney, the ambulance to the hospital, and yet so few what-ifs to ponder. When people ask him what happened that night in Carson Gonzalez should find some peace in saying, “A better man.” And he should one day, and hopefully, one day soon, say it with a smile.