{"id":10463,"date":"2020-02-19T15:21:16","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T23:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.combateamericas.com\/?p=10463"},"modified":"2020-02-19T15:21:16","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T23:21:16","slug":"erick-gonzalez-why-rafa-will-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/erick-gonzalez-why-rafa-will-win","title":{"rendered":"Erick Gonzalez: Why Rafa Will Win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This Friday, Combate Americas returns to Mexicali, B.C. Rafa &#8220;Gifted\u201d Garc\u00eda (11-0) has his first title defense against the winner of the 2019 Copa Combate, the Peruvian Humberto Bandenay (18-7-1).<\/p>\n<p>Erick &#8220;The Ghost Pepper&#8221; Gonzalez has fought both these fighters: Rafa Garcia for the world title and Humberto Bandenay in the final of the Copa Combate. So we decided to talk to him about it.<\/p>\n<p>For Gonzalez, Garcia has the advantage. He believes Rafa will not let anything stop him until he has successfully defended his crown.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe Rafa is tougher. Rafa can eat punches and keep pushing. Rafa will also be stronger. It\u2019s the Mexican blood inside him. That Mexican mentality,\u201d Gonzalez explained. \u201cAlthough I will say, Humberto is fast and very technical, strong left hand and kick. I think Humberto best chance is setting that up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Rafa Garcia vs Erick Gonzalez Full Fight | MMA | Combate Mexicali\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vSWRsfb6VpA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Garcia will have the hometown advantage, something Gonzalez was also up against when he faced him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the environment in Mexicali is the loudest I have ever heard. I couldn\u2019t hear my corners. In Peru, it wasn\u2019t as loud. Mexicali was definitely an experience I&#8217;ll never forget. They energy of the crowd will definitely hype you up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gonzalez sees Garcia defending the belt successfully and dared to get more specific.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see Rafa winning by submission in the 2nd round and Humberto will gas. He gassed in our fight with 3 min rounds and only 3 rounds. His frame is muscular, so easy to get tired with that much muscle. Rafa has a thick build and has conserved cardio with all that little fat he has.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Friday, Combate Americas returns to Mexicali, B.C. Rafa &#8220;Gifted\u201d Garc\u00eda (11-0) has his first title defense against the winner of the 2019 Copa Combate, the Peruvian Humberto Bandenay (18-7-1). Erick &#8220;The Ghost Pepper&#8221; Gonzalez has fought both these fighters: Rafa Garcia for the world title and Humberto Bandenay in the final of the Copa&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8687],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-combate-mexicali-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/combateglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}