By: Sean Cross
“We’ve had a great training camp and I’m excited to get in the ring for a triathlon with Roman.” So said Juan Francisco Estrada on the eve of his third fight against the legendary Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez. “I’m happy and I feel like it’s going to be a great fight like the last two.” There will be plenty on the line when Estrada and Gonzalez answer the bell this Saturday night in Glendale, Arizona, with the vacant WBC junior bantamweight title at stake.
“He beat me in 2012,” Estrada said of Gonzalez, “and I beat him in the second fight, so you could say that’s the decider. There could be a fourth like Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez, who knows? We’ll have our trilogy, and we don’t know if it ends here or not. Who We will try to find out if it is better, who will win the war and if there is a fourth one in the future, God willing, bring him.
Although the two men are fierce rivals these days, Estrada has made it clear that he respects his former foe. “He’s going to be a Hall of Famer,” he said of Gonzalez. “He is a fighter who has won multiple titles in four divisions. I respect him as a fighter, and you could say he had a very different career to mine. I also won titles, but I think he is a great fighter and in the fights we had. I think he realizes that I am not another fighter and now when we fight we will decide who is better.
According to Estrada, he and Chocoletito are rivals rather than bitter rivals. “When you’re told you’re going to fight a chocolateton, there’s competition, but it’s a sport,” he says. “I’m going to kill him! That’s a different feeling. You are more focused on having a good training camp to beat him… In the ring I say he is my enemy, but after the fight, we hug, we leave the ring, we talk. And we wish you good health and we will be on the way.
All that being said, Estrada is well aware of the importance of this weekend’s fight. “This fight is important because it’s a triple whammy against a Hall of Fame fighter,” he said. Imagine marrying Roman Gonzalez. You wouldn’t take anything from him but I would be in his place.
