‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez claims super-flyweight belt from Carlos Cuadras

Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez took the best effort of a gifted, heavier champion and never yielded Saturday at the Forum, reinforcing why some consider the Nicaraguan the best fighter in the world.

In a thrilling World Boxing Council super-flyweight title fight that will contend for fight of the year, the unbeaten Gonzalez dealt Mexico’s Carlos Cuadras his first loss and took his belt by unanimous decision.

Judges scored the toe-to-toe battle 117-111 (Cathy Leonard), 116-112 (Max DeLuca), 115-113 (Robert Hecko) for Gonzalez (44-0, 37 knockouts), who surpassed his late legendary countryman and coach Alexis Arguello in belts by winning his fourth while Cuadras is now 35-1-1.

“He is the teacher, I am his son,” Gonzalez said of Arguello.

It was Gonzalez’s relentlessness, hand speed and skill that won him the fight with 6,714 watching.

While Cuadras produced an energetic showing, hitting Gonzalez so often that the new champion’s right eye was left a swollen mess in the end, Gonzalez routinely answered Cuadras’ blows with more impressive combinations.

Punch statistics showed Gonzalez landed 322 of 983 while Cuadras hit Gonzalez 257 times and threw 889 punches. Power punches were 295-212 in Gonzalez’s favor. Neither man touched the canvas.

“He was very good, but I was better tonight,” Gonzalez said. “My combinations were the difference.”

Cuadras’ early energy was zapped briefly by one of those Gonzalez combinations in the third round, and a hard left directly on Cuadras’ nose has likely set up many other finishes in Gonzalez’s career.

Not this night. Cuadras responded with a hard punch to the face near the close of the round, and after belting Gonzalez again with a left in the fifth, he swaggered out of harm’s way — only briefly — to accentuate the blow. Seconds later, the pair engaged in an exchange of multiple punches in the center of the ring.

Gonzalez, also the WBC flyweight champion, quickened his pursuit in the seventh, backing up Cuadras with a punch off a combination.

“Gonzalez is relentless. He just won’t stop,” Cuadras said. “He never gets tired all night long. I felt I did enough to win the fight. I’m sure he’s never been hit like I hit him, but you have to respect him. He kept coming, and his defense was better than expected. He stopped shots with his arms and threw punches with those same arms.”

The co-main event was a rematch of April’s fight-of-the-year contender between light-middleweights Jesus Soto-Karass of Mexico and Yoshihiro Kamegai of Japan, and the toe-to-toe belting resumed from their draw at downtown’s Belasco Theater.

Kamegai (27-3-2, 24 KOs) won by landing a precise eighth-round punch on the law that knocked down Soto-Karass and reduced him to survival mode for the remainder of the round before his corner told referee Jack Reiss that Soto-Karass (28-11-4) would not answer the bell for the ninth round.

Earlier Saturday at London, three-belt middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin posted his 23rd consecutive knockout and 17th straight middleweight title triumph with a fifth-round technical knockout of England’s welterweight world champion Kell Brook.

Brook (36-1), after complaining of blurred vision that caused him to see “three or four” Golovkins following a hard second-round punch, was absorbing some heavy blows to the head in the fifth when Brook’s trainer, Dominic Ingle, threw in the towel to Brook’s wonder and dismay.

A postfight exam at a hospital found Brook suffered a fractured orbital bone and he was scheduled to undergo surgery.

Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) and his Big Bear-based trainer Abel Sanchez rated the champion’s showing no better than a “four.”

The dominant Golovkin joked a week earlier to The Times that maybe looking more vulnerable would land him the bout he wants, against Mexico’s Canelo Alvarez, who has said he wants to delay the date to September 2017.

“The guys who don’t want to get in the ring with Gennady saw him get hit tonight,” Golovkin promoter Tom Loeffler said. “Maybe that’ll inspire them to sign a contract now.”

lance.pugmire@latimes.com

Pugmire reported from Los Angeles