Roman 'Chocolatito' Gonzalez retains flyweight title with near shutout of McWilliams Arroyo

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - If there were any doubts about whether Roman "Chocolatito" Gonzalez deserved boxing's No. 1 pound-for-pound ranking, the Nicaraguan mighty mite erased them on Saturday night at the Forum.

The 5-foot, 3-inch Gonzalez retained his WBC flyweight title with a punishing, and technically near-perfect victory against tough, very game but overmatched challenger McWilliams Arroyo. The crowd, waving Nicaraguan flags, was heavily pro-Gonzalez and had a lot to cheer about.

Judges Max DeLuca and Eddie Hernandez scored it 119-109 and Dave Moretti saw the fight a shutout, 120-108, for Gonzalez.

Gonzalez threw nearly 100 punches per round, connecting on 360 of 1,132 punches, while Arroyo connected on 193 of 711.

Gonzalez, maybe the most technically sound fighter in the sport, mixed up his attack all night against Arroyo, going to the head, then the body on his deadly combinations, which he landed at will throughout. And he used a stiff jab to keep Arroyo moving backwards much of the time.

Even though the fight was mostly one-sided in Gonzalez's favor, he never was able to put the Puerto Rican away, ending his streak of nine consecutive knockouts.

"It was a very difficult fight, Arroyo moves very well, he knows how to avoid the punches," Gonzalez said through a translator. "I wanted to fight him, I wanted to roll him and catch him with counter punches, but it was difficult because he moved quite a bit."

Arroyo has never been stopped and he can proud that remains intact. There were no knockdowns in the fight.

The victory improved Gonzalez's record to 45-0 with 38 knockouts. Arroyo, from Puerto Rico, fell to 16-3 (14 KOs). The fight was the co-feature of the Gennady Golovkin-Dominic Wade middleweight title fight, which ended in a second-round KO for Golovkin.

"My conditioning was fantastic," Chocolatito said. "Training in Costa Rica made all the difference in the world."

Chocolatito, 28, said he would likely have one more fight at 112 pounds, then move up to 115. He weighed in at a surprising 126 pounds on HBO's unofficial scale Saturday night.

"Every fighter has hands. There's no weak fighter, they're all good," he said. "(It's) most important to come at top of conditioning."

Gonzalez, USA TODAY Sports/Boxing Junkie's top pound-for-pound fighter, had not fought since his ninth-round TKO of former champion Brian Viloria in the co-main event of Golovkin's TKO of David Lemieux last Oct. 17 at Madison Square Garden.

This was Gonzalez's third consecutive fight being the co-feature to Golovkin, and said earlier this week he was ready to headline his own card.

Arroyo, 30, is the twin brother of McJoe Arroyo, the IBF super flyweight champion. He put up about as good a fight against the pound-for-pound champion as anyone could have imagined.

(Photo: Roman Gonzalez throws a punch at McWilliams Arroyo. Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea, USA TODAY Sports)