'Chocolatito' Gonzalez to make hometown ring return Sept. 12
Win will position former pound-for-pound king for title opportunity
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Former pound-for-pound king and four-division world champion Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez, still on the hunt for another world title opportunity, will end a 14-month layoff on Sept. 12, Gueguense Box Promotions announced.
The surefire Hall of Famer will face Hector Robles in a 10-round junior bantamweight fight in front of a hometown crowd at the Alexis Arguello Sports Center in Managua, Nicaragua.
The fight will be Gonzalez’s second in a row at the venue named after his mentor and fellow all-time great Nicaraguan fighter. Before that, Gonzalez had not fought in Nicaragua since 2015 while engaging in a series of high-profile fights in the United States.
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“The quadruple world champion returns to the ring in a warm-up fight ahead of his next big challenge,” Gueguense Box Promotions said.
Last July, Gonzalez ended a 19-month layoff with a dominating 10th-round knockout of Rober Barrera.
The fight was Gonzales’ first since a debatable majority decision loss in his rubber match with Juan Francisco Estrada for Estrada’s lineal junior bantamweight title and the vacant WBC belt in December 2022.
Gonzalez (52-4, 42 KOs), 38, has won world titles at strawweight, junior flyweight, flyweight and junior bantamweight. He has said he had interest in pursuing a title in a fifth division at bantamweight but he is ranked in the top 10 at junior bantamweight by all four major organizations: No. 1 by the WBC and WBO; No. 2 by the WBA; and No. 8 by the IBF.
“This is a tune-up fight in order to be ready for a title shot at the end of the year and most likely his retirement fight,” Carlos Blandon, Gonzalez’s manager, told Fight Freaks Unite. ”He is really motivated and excited to get back in the swing of things inside the ring.”
There had been talks for Gonzalez to box on a July 25 card put on by All Star Boxing, but Gonzalez preferred the September time frame, so his promoter, Teiken Promotions, allowed him to fight on the Gueguense Box Promotions event.
Before the fight with Robles was made there had been conversations about challenging South Africa’s Phumulele Cafu (11-0-3, 8 KOs) for his WBO junior bantamweight title, also in Nicaragua, this past spring but no deal was finalized.
Robles (13-8-3, 4 KOs), of Mexico, will be taking an enormous step up in competition. He is coming of an eight-round unanimous decision over Gerardo Rodriguez Alvarado, who dropped to 4-4, in their flyweight bout on May 8.
Robles is 2-3-1 in his last six bouts. In his most notable fight, Robles faced countryman David Cuellar in 2020 and suffered a fourth-round knockout.
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Will this fight be shown in the States? I could be wrong, but I feel like Chocalatito's last bout from the very same venue in Nicaragua, was picked up by ESPN+ at the time, because I do recall watching it live.