Saturday night at the StubHub Center in Carson, California, in a Showtime doubleheader, the main event features WBC featherweight champion Abner Mares (26-0-1, 13 KOs) defending his title against former two-division world champion Jhonny Gonzalez (54-8, 46 KOs).
The 27-year-old Mares has won titles in three divisions and while there have been some bumps in the road, he is fast becoming a marquee name. We?ll find out this weekend how much the 31-year-old Gonzalez has left, and if there?s enough left to put those expectations to the test.
In the lead-in to the bout, the fighters met with the press to discuss Saturday?s fight. The one opponent they have in common is Daniel Ponce De Leon, so he was an inevitable part of the discussion.
?In that fight with Ponce De Leon,? said Gonzalez about the man to whom lost his WBC featherweight title in Sept. 2012, ?I wasn?t 100 percent mentally and physically there. I had some outside issues that affected me, some personal problems. I went in there knowing that mentally I wasn?t there and then the head butt just broke my concentration even more. You have to see the difference. Styles makes fights. Ponce De Leon is a southpaw. Abner?s not a southpaw. He?s a clean fighter. I can?t say the same about Ponce De Leon.?
No one questions whether or not Mares is a southpaw, but to call him a clean fighter is like calling Santa a clean-shaven cat in Armani. The fights with Vic Darchinyan in 2010 and Joseph Agbeko in 2011 suggest there is evidence to the contrary.
Mares, unlike Gonzalez, stopped Ponce De Leon when they met in his last fight. Although Mares was taking his former sparring partner to school, he was aided and abetted by what many felt at the time was a premature stoppage.
?We had sparred many times,? Mares said. ?We were gym partners, we sparred many times, like I said, and it didn?t affect me or it did not affect him. I saw a different Ponce De Leon that night. I was able to win things out, but you can?t expect the same type of fighter when you spar them come fight night. So I?m not looking for that. I know Jhonny comes with his A-game, so I got to expect a tough Jhonny.?
Gonzalez?s age, no less than the wear and tear of over 60 pro fights, needs to be considered, even though he says he never felt better.
?My body still feels great,? said Gonzalez. ?My body?s still responding in the gym and the trainings. I definitely think this is a very important fight at this moment and we are looking forward to it and then going up another division to the super featherweight and then at that point fight even bigger fights there.?
It?s a mistake for Gonzalez to look past Mares. His future starts and possibly ends Saturday night.
Even though Mares is headlining Saturday?s card, even though he is earning Showtime money, Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer insists that he is ?overlooked.? Truth be told, Mares is no more overlooked than any other little guy, and a lot less overlooked than some. Overlooked is someone like Guillermo Rigondeaux, who recently embarrassed a former pound-for-pound claimant while hardly breaking a sweat yet cannot get a fight. That?s overlooked. Overlooked is 35-0 El Chocolito, Nicaragua?s Rom?n Gonz?lez, who flies beneath the radar and continues to fight for peanuts in Central America. That?s overlooked. But Mares? He?s not overlooked. That description however is overcooked. It presupposes that there are no fighters but Golden Boy fighters and that no one knows or cares about them, or how truly gifted they in fact are.
