Boxing, says featherweight contender Joet Gonzalez, is a learning process. That applies whether you win or lose.
Gonzalez is coming off the biggest fight of his career and his first loss, a unanimous decision against Shakur Stevenson for a vacant 126-pound title last October in Reno, Nevada. All three scorecards were the same: 119-109, or 11 rounds to one. It wasn’t close.
Gonzalez hasn’t made excuses, even when he has had the opportunity. Five months later, nothing has changed. It just wasn’t his night.
“I just found myself stuck in this [rut],” said Gonzalez, who faces Chris Avalos on March 19 at Avalon Hollywood in Hollywood, California. “I was doing the same thing over and over again, every round. I knew what I needed to do I just couldn’t do it. It was weird.
“… That’s boxing. You learn something in every fight.”
Gonzalez (23-1, 14 KOs) has had a lot of learning opportunities.
For example, he has had the opportunity to spar with highly respected world champions Vasiliy Lomachenko and Oscar Valdez, which he described as “good sparring, really good work.”
He said he held his own against Lomachenko, who many regard as the No. 1 fighter pound for pound in the world, but he added that the gifted Ukrainian was no ordinary sparring partner.
“You could say Lomachenko is in his own category. The guy’s very competitive, very, very skilled and smart in the ring,” he told Boxing Junkie.
Of course, the fight against Stevenson – his first professional setback – also provided valuable lessons.
The main one: That no matter how prepared you are for fight you never know how things will unfold in the ring. All a fighter can do is train properly, do his best, accept the result and come back to do it again.
“I had a great camp [for Stevenson],” he said. “I had great sparring, everything. It just wasn’t my day. What I learned is that you can have one of your best camps, best sparring, and, come fight time, you don’t perform the way you’re supposed to.
“And then you have camps where you look like s—, you get your ass beat in sparring, maybe you’re not in great shape, and come fight time you knock the dude out cold. It is what it is.”
Gonzalez certainly isn’t dwelling on the past. He said taking his first loss wasn’t as devastating as one might think. He leaned on his family to help him in the immediate aftermath, took about a week off to rest and then went right back to the gym.
His record looks different now but he’s the same determined boxer with sights locked onto another title shot.
“My goal is still there, my hunger is still there,” he said.
Of course, he’ll have to get past Avalos (27-7, 20 KOs) to get back into the championship hunt.
Avalos has been a major player at both junior featherweight and featherweight but has come up short in his biggest fights, knockout losses to Carl Frampton for a 122-pound title in 2015, Oscar Valdez at 126 pounds later that year and Leo Santa Cruz for a 126-pound belt in 2017.
After the loss to Santa Cruz, he stepped away from boxing for two years only to lose a decision to Abimael Ortiz in his comeback fight this past November.
Still, Gonzalez isn’t taking anything for granted. They know one another because they both grew up in the Los Angeles area and they even sparred once, when Gonzalez was still an amateur and Avalos a young pro. Gonzalez doesn’t remember much about the session other than it was “normal sparring.”
“He’s a tough guy,” Gonzalez said. “He comes to fight. He doesn’t come as an opponent, he comes to win. I’m ready. I want to make a statement. I want to show boxing fans, boxing people that [the loss to Stevenson] was just a bad night and that I can do well against tough guys.
“I’m still going forward toward my goal of being a world champion.”
Follow Michael Rosenthal on Twitter @mrosenthal_box