As Jhonny Gonzalez's dramatic Round 1 stoppage of pound-for-pound star Abner Mares proved last weekend, fortunes in boxing can rise and fall in an instant.
Mares had ground away at this brutal sport for years, cleaning out weight classes and collecting world titles. He'd garnered so much respect in the sport that when his promoter, Richard Schaefer, declared that Mares should be viewed as the pound-for-pound No. 2 behind Floyd Mayweather, nobody laughed at him, even if they politely disagreed.
Mares is a serious talent, and nobody who knows much about boxing will write him off based on one shocking loss. But it's a major setback to his standing in the sport.
Gonzalez, meanwhile, finally gets the kind of respect he's been waiting for. He has been winning world titles since the Bush administration and has defeated some very good fighters.
But nothing he's done in his long years in the sport will raise his reputation more quickly than his dramatic destruction of one of Golden Boy's primary golden boys.
Here are the boxers like Gonzales who have improved their reputation this year.
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