By Dan Ambrose: Juan Francisco Estrada has decided to vacate his WBA ‘Super World’ super flyweight title rather than face WBA ‘regular’ champion Joshua Franco in their ordered fight with the organization.
Juan Estrada (42-3, 28 KOs) will instead face Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez in a lucrative trilogy match, which will likely be a lot more than if ‘El Gallo’ were to meet Franco (18-1-2, 8 KOs) next.
Estrada, 32, will hold onto his WBC Franciso 115-lb belt, and face Chocolatito. The Franchise title allows Estrada to fight essentially anyone he wants without the headaches involved with defending against less popular fighters like Joshua Franco.
“I don’t think they’ll fight with Franco,” said Juan Estrada’s coach Alfredo Caballero to Izquierdazo. “We already left the WBA belt; we are left with the WBC Franchise.”
“Yes, practically (they give up the WBA title ), I don’t know if the company or someone has announced it,” said Caballero. “But we are not going to fight with Franco.”
It’s wise for Juan Estrada to give up his WBA 115-lb title because the fans don’t want to see him fighting Joshua Franco.
They want the fight between Estrada and Chocolatito again, and they should have already fought their trilogy match last year rather than waiting until now to meet again.
Once Juan Estrada vacates the WBA belt, Franco, 26, will move in to scoop it up. Franco might be able to hold onto the WBA ‘Super World’ title for a while, as long as he doesn’t fight someone good like Chocolatito.
That fight is unlikely to happen because Franco isn’t as famous as his younger brother Bam Rodriguez, and there’s not much for Chocolatito to gain in fighting him.
The 115-lb division only has three fighters that bring in the fans: Bam Rodriguez, Chocolatito, and Estrada.
Estrada beat Chocolatito by a 12-round split decision last year in March in a fight many boxing fans saw as a robbery in Dallas.
Chocolatito outworked, outpunched, and outboxed Estrada just as he had in their first fight in 2012. The scores were 117-111, 115-113 for Estrada, and 115-113 for Chocolatito. Unfortunately, two of the judges felt Estrada had done enough to deserve the win.
Chocolatito is coming off a spectacular 12-round unanimous decision win over Julio Cesar Martinez last March in San Diego.
That performance was out of this world good by Chocolatito, who looked just as good as ever in totally dominating the young slugger Rey Martinez. Chocolatito will need to put in another spectacular performance for him to get the victory over the popular Estrada.
