GONZALEZ-MONTIEL: THINKING BIG

May 23, 2006 - by Nat Gottlieb

Jhonny Gonzalez and Fernando Montiel are small-size fighters with big-size hearts and talent, but in the world of boxing they struggle with the same problems shorter people do in civilian life: they're hard to spot in a crowd, and must do something special to be noticed.

As the gross receipts came in on Oscar De La Hoya's victory over Ricardo Mayorga on May 6, the numbers made bantamweights (118) like Gonzalez and Montiel even more acutely aware of what is at stake when they face each other May 27 at the Home Depot Center in Carson City, CA in a championship fight on HBO's "Boxing After Dark" series.

The De La Hoya-Marorga match-up in Las Vegas generated 875,000 pay-per-view buys, and $43.8 million in revenue, with each fighter earning millions.

On the same night De La Hoya and Mayorga fought, junior bantamweight (115 pounds) champion Luis Perez successfully defended his title against Russian Dimitri Kirolov at the DCU Center in Worcester, Mass. When Perez left the arena, he was $27,000 "richer," if that word is appropriate. Kirilov pocketed roughly enough to buy a decent, mid-size used car, $8,000, and wasn't about to quit his day job.

The 5'-4 Montiel (32-1-1, 24 KOs) has won world titles in two weight divisions, but has never had a major pay day. While he is proud of his belts, he has no intention of being a chump change champion. That's why the 27-year-old Montiel, currently a junior bantamweight title holder, is stepping up in weight class to challenge bantamweight titlist Gonzalez (32-4), a much bigger and stronger opponent who has won 18 straight and knocked out 28 of his 32 opponents.

"In the current landscape for lighter weight fighters, you have to do this to get the exposure you need," said Montiel's manager, Gary Gittelsohn, who once guided the career of former light heavyweight champion "Prince" Charles Williams and currently has in his stable unbeaten flyweight champion, Brian Viloria, Alfonso Gomez from "The Contender" and middleweight contender Kingsley Ikeke. "This is the way to get Montiel into the public consciousness. Smaller guys have to take the risks. They don't have the luxury of fighting easier fights like the bigger guys."

For the 24-year-old Gonzalez, who's 5-7 1/2 and has an unusually big reach (71 inches) for a bantamweight, beating an outstanding boxer like Montiel is part of a larger design to build his credentials for matches at higher, more lucrative weight classes.

"You haven't seen the best of Jhonny Gonzalez," said his manager Oswaldo Kuchle. "I have talked to (his promoter) Golden Boy about when the great Marco Antonio Barrera retires in two or three years. By then, Jhonny will be much bigger and stronger and will be the new Barrera at 126 pounds."

Gittelsohn, while very high on Montiel's talent, is aware this match-up is something of a crap shoot. But as gamblers are fond of saying, "you gotta be in it to win it." Even so, he had his doubts about the wisdom of taking this fight until Montiel and his father/trainer Manuel came to him. "Not only did Montiel agree with my strategy, but he and his father begged me to make this fight, they wouldn't even consider other options. To be a great talent at his size, you have to move up and do something extraordinary to capture the public's imagination." Montiel agrees.

"At my weight it is hard to get exposure," the Mexican Montiel said through his interpreter, Ruben Gomez. "We are going to do something out of the ordinary."

This will not be the first time Gittelsohn will have thrown the dice for high stakes. In 1996 Gittelsohn managed Junior Jones, who had briefly been a junior featherweight champion two years earlier, but his padded 42-2 record showed not a single quality opponent since, and included a loss to Daryl Pinckney, who was 18-18-2 at the time.

But Gittelsohn had maneuvered Jones through eight straight victories, and although seven of those opponents had a combined record of 98-74, he managed to get a junior featherweight title fight in November of 1996 against Mexican sensation Barrera, who was 43-0 and had made eight straight title defenses. "No one but Junior and I thought we had a shot," Gittelsohn said.

Not only did Jones hand Barrera his first defeat on a 5th round TKO, but he won a unanimous decision in their rematch. Since then, Barrera has lost only once apiece to Erik Morales and Manny Pacquiao, and is currently 61-4. "So don't sell Montiel short," Gittelsohn said.

Gonzalez is no Barrera, however -- at least not now -- but he represents a very dangerous choice of opponent by Gittelsohn. Although Gonzalez has lost four times, his record is deceptive. Two of those losses came in his first two professional fights, at a time when he wasn't taking boxing very seriously. The other two came in back-to-back losses in just his 17th fight to a far more seasoned Ricardo Vargas (31-9-3).

"He wasn't ready for Vargas," Kuechle admits. "He was too young and didn't have the type of experience Vargas had. But he kept both fights close."

An extremely competitive man, a disappointed Gonzalez announced to Kuechle immediately after the second Vargas loss he was quitting boxing. "He told me he wanted to retire and go back to studying and better himself for his future," Kuechle said. "Jhonny is a very ambitious kid, and he doesn't like to be second best. If he can't be the best, he prefers not to fight."

Fortunately for Jhonny - who has kept the name that was misspelled on his birth certificate by the hospital - Kuechle and the boxer's father talked him into taking one more fight. "I got him an easy one. He won and looked good," Kuechle said.

Since the loss to Vargas, Gonzalez has won 18 straight and titles in two weight divisions. On paper, Gonzalez enjoys a big size advantage over Montiel. Besides being three and a half inches taller, Gonzalez' freaky 71-inch reach is six inches more than his opponent.

Conventional wisdom, says longtime HBO commentator Larry Merchant, is "that a taller fighter with long arms who can take a punch like Gonzalez can be difficult to beat because they can create a favorable distance, use their arms for defense, and of course they have an advantage if they are effective jabbers."

Merchant witnessed that first hand last month when a much taller Wladimir Klitschko used his longer arms to keep Chris Byrd, a half-foot shorter, from getting to his body and chin and won an easy TKO and a heavyweight title.

Gonzalez, with a tremendous wing-span advantage over other fighters his size, has proven he can use his long jab with power to set up the rest of his varied arsenal. To get a feeling for just how unusual Gonzalez' reach is at his weight level, consider some comparisons. The recognized pound-for-pounder at bantamweight, Rafael Marquez, has a 68 ½ inch reach. Move up the ladder and you find that Pacquiao (67), Jose Luis Castillo (69), Diego Corrales (70), Miguel Cotto (67), Barrera (70) and Ricky Hatton (65) have smaller reaches. Gonzalez compares favorably to Morales (72), Floyd Mayweather (72), De La Hoya (73) and even Byrd (74).

"I don't see any way Montiel can beat Jhonny," Kuechle said. "He's too big and too strong for him." Gittelsohn, however, believes that he and the boxer's father/trainer Manuel have a strategy to win. "In this fight, we can't give Gonzalez any range to throw his power punches," Gittelsohn said. "We have to fight at a range that makes Jhonny uncomfortable, get inside his long arms and work the body and then get out before getting hit with a bomb."

Montiel, whom Gittelsohn calls "the best athlete I have ever seen in boxing," feels he has the agility to pull off the strategy and has another weapon -- his smarts. "We are aware how tough of a fighter he is, and obviously he is much bigger and stronger than me," Montiel said. "So I am going to win with intelligence, but still come out and fight an aggressive, crowd-pleasing fight."

Kuechle seemed almost amused by Montiel's thinking-man's approach to beating his fighter. "He's going to have to be very, very smart to beat Jhonny," Kuechle said. "Jhonny is a very intelligent fighter, too, and I don't see Montiel outsmarting him."

Besides being highly ambitious - anybody who plans on succeeding Barrera had better be - Gonzalez has managed to remain a "hungry" fighter, even after 36 bouts, thanks in part to training in what surely is the most bizarre "gym" in all of boxing.

The first time Kuechle saw Gonzalez' so-called gym he was stunned. "Jhonny invited me to watch him spar,' Kuechle said. "In Mexico City, the streets have big spaces (islands) in between the lanes where people can walk. I met him on the island in front of his house and said, 'Okay, where's the gym?' He said, 'You're standing in the ring."

Kuechle was asked to step aside and watched incredulously as ring posts were hammered into the grass, ropes put up and a mat thrown down on the ground. Heavy and speed bags were hung from tree limbs. Then precisely at 10 a.m., as he does every day, Gonzalez started training. Neighborhood kids, who knew his training hours, flocked in to watch, while cars sped noisily by on both sides of the ring, spewing exhaust fumes.

"I had seen some bad gyms in Mexico, but nothing like this," Kuechle said.

Two championship belts later, Gonzalez continues to train on the streets of Mexico City. "He once tried to work in a regular gym but he didn't like it," Kuechle said. "It was too fancy and he didn't feel hungry like he does when he fights in the street."

Montiel's motivation comes from a different source, his family. Montiel was one of four fighting sons of Manuel, a top-rated flyweight in Mexico. "Without a doubt my father has been an instrumental part of my life," Montiel said. "The number one thing he instilled in me is always to be humble, always dedicate your self 100 per cent to what you do and leave it all on top of the ring." Manuel was also a stickler for defense.

"Fernando has the athleticism to be almost like a Mexican Winky Wright," Gittelsohn said. "He has very good defense, and when he needs to explode he can. He's not just a defensive fighter, I want to emphasize that."

Both Gittelsohn and Montiel have to emphasize things like that because they are well aware of the importance of being perceived as a crowd pleaser, which is virtually the only way to make money at the lower weight levels. When Viloria beat Eric Ortiz for the light flyweight title last September, he made a point in the post-fight press conference of promoting the excitement often ignored in the lower weight classes.

"A lot of attention gets drawn to the larger weight division," Viloria said. "I'm trying to show that these lighter divisions warrant the same type of recognition as the heavier weights."

Easier said than done. One of the few low weight fighters to make big money was Michael Carbajal, who retired in 1999. Thanks in large part to promoter Bob Arum, Carbajal was the first boxer below 125 pounds to fight for a purse of seven figures. Arum engineered a reunification junior flyweight title match between Carbajal and Humberto Gonzalez in March of 1993. Arum pushed and begged until he got both featured on the cover of multiple magazines in the months preceding the bout. Both got a guarantee of $1 million, minus sanctioning fees, a record sum at flyweight or lower. It was also the first time that a junior flyweight bout was the main event on a pay-per-view card.

Neither Gonzalez nor Montiel expects anywhere near close to that kind of money yet, but a victory in this bout with wide exposure on HBO would significantly propel them down that yellow brick road.

"I guarantee after I fight Jhonny Gonzalez people will be wanting to see more of me," said Montiel, whose hopes for bigger paydays down the line include match-ups at junior bantamweight with popular and very exciting flyweight champion Jorge Arce, who has indicated he wants to move up in weight. Also on Montiel's radar is pay-per-view veteran and fellow junior bantamweight title holder Martin Castillo, and bantamweight pound-for-pounder Rafael Marquez. Should Montiel beat Gonzalez at bantamweight, he would also be a three-division title holder, with a shot at becoming the first Mexican to hold belts in four weight classes.

For the bigger Gonzalez, a victory over Montiel would make him a more attractive opponent in a high profile reunification title fight with Marquez, and later in a move up to junior featherweight to take on current belt holder Israel Vasquez. Ultimately, as Gonzalez fills out his frame, he and Golden Boy see him as a force at featherweight and junior lightweight.

"The 122 and 126 divisions right now are fairly open,"Merchant said. "Featherweights like Pacquiao, Barrera and Morales have followed the money up to 130, so Gonzalez may do well at the higher weight."

First, however, these two ambitious young fighters have business in the ring with each other. Both know to be "seen" at their size, they must be "heard." Look for each to make a loud, exciting statement.