‘Tis the season for caving to the temptation to steal bite-size candy from your kids’ buckets, and ‘tis therefore the season for remembering that those were right – chocolate and PB are two great tastes that taste great together.

From 2015-’18, boxing fans discovered a similar truism – "Chocolatito" and GGG are two great fighters who fight great together.

Promoter Tom Loeffler happened upon a fantastic formula a little less than a decade ago. Gennady “GGG” Golovkin had broken through as a pugilistic cult hero who couldn’t land the major fights he wanted, and at the same time, Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez was gaining buzz as the best little man in the sport. And so to elevate cards on which perhaps Golovkin’s opponent wasn’t setting fans’ hearts racing, and cards that Gonzalez wasn’t quite equipped to headline, Loeffler’s K2 Promotions doubled up and mashed the flavors together.

Five times in three years – actually, six times if you count a split-site HBO doubleheader – GGG and Chocolatito shared a card and proved a potent combination.

This Saturday night in Philadelphia, with a new generation of supremely talented fighters, the formula returns.

On a DAZN card at the Wells Fargo Center, local attraction Jaron “Boots” Ennis tops the bill in a rematch against Karen Chukhadzhian, and in the co-feature, Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez takes on veteran Pedro Guevara.

Ennis-Chukhadzhian II is the kind of main event that needs a little support. Rodriguez-Guevara is a solid supporting bout in search of a main event. Combining assets to create the Boots-and-Bam show makes a whole lot of sense.

You got Boots on my Bam!

You got Bam on my Boots!

Matchroom Boxing has found two (potentially) great fighters who (potentially) fight great together.

And the individual parallels to Golovkin and Gonzalez are obvious.

Ennis is the Golovkin in this scenario. His talent is undeniable, his knockout percentage is spectacular, and his failure to convince any A-listers to share a ring with him is frustrating to all involved.

Plus Ennis is undefeated, just as GGG was when the “also featuring Chocolatito” years began.

Rodriguez is the Gonzalez here. He’s tearing up the lower weight classes – Bam’s biggest fights so far have been at flyweight and super fly, the same two divisions in which Chocolatito fought during those GGG-double-bill years – with a rare ability to flash pound-for-pound-level skills while delivering crowd-pleasing action at every turn.

Plus Bam is undefeated, just as Chocolatito was when the “also featuring GGG” years began.

Boots just topped a DAZN/Matchroom card at the same arena in Philly four months ago, and that one didn’t need much of a co-feature – nobody was counting on Jalil Hackett vs. Peter Dobson to put asses in seats. So what’s different this time? Well, the IBF foisted one of the most pointless mandatories of all-time upon Ennis, requiring him to face Chukhadzhian for a second time in under two years or else surrender his belt.

Ennis-Chukhadzhian II is a harder sell than “The Adventures of Pluto Nash II.” The first fight was scored 120-108 on all three cards, Chukhadzhian spent 36 minutes refusing to engage, and the only unresolved question afterward was whether the fans at Capital One Arena in D.C. were saying “boo” or “Boots.” (Or “.”)

Even in Philly, where Ennis is developing into a legit attraction (his last fight, against overmatched but relatively credible David Avanesyan, drew an announced crowd of 14,930), it’s tough to expect people to pay for a sequel to an utter bore. So Matchroom got creative. The promotional company took another one of its rising stars, one with no particular appeal in Philadelphia but with massive appeal to all hardcore boxing fans, and went all Emeril Lagasse and loudly dropped a “Bam” into the frying pan.

There are echoes of how the GGG-Chocolatito combo started. The date was May 16, 2015, and nearly three years on from his HBO debut against Grzegorz Proksa, Golovkin was withering on the vine to a degree. He’d convinced plenty of good boxers to face him: Gabe Rosado, Matthew Macklin, Daniel Geale, Martin Murray. But his pursuit of lineal middleweight champion Sergio Martinez had gone nowhere, and the same was apparently going to be the case with Martinez’s successor, Miguel Cotto. The best Golovkin could do for his date at the Forum in Inglewood, California that May was Willie Monroe, Jr., a relatively unproven foe who simply wasn’t viewed as threatening to GGG.

Nicaragua’s Gonzalez, meanwhile, having ruled the strawweight, junior flyweight, and flyweight divisions since winning his first title seven years earlier, was ready to return to America after a few successful gigs in Vegas and California in 2011 and 2012. Veteran Edgar Sosa was lined up, and HBO had itself a card with two pound-for-pounders in action.

Chocolatito destroyed Sosa in two rounds, Golovkin dispatched Monroe in six, and a dynamic one-two punch was born.

They stepped it up for their next outing, to main event and co-main of a pay-per-view from Madison Square Garden. It was GGG’s first PPV, against David Lemieux (no Martinez or Cotto or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, but the next best thing after that trio), and in the semifinal, Chocolatito defended his flyweight title against Brian Viloria. Gonzalez won by KO in nine, Golovkin got the job done in eight, and both were on the rise pound-for-pound – with Floyd Mayweather’s recent retirement, The Ring magazine had Gonzalez first and Golovkin third after these lopsided triumphs.

From there, it was back to the Forum for non-PPV-worthy matchups. On April 23, 2016, Golovkin squashed perhaps the weakest opponent he ever faced on HBO, Dominic Wade, in two rounds, while Gonzalez won by near-shutout over the 12-round distance against McWilliams Arroyo.

Then came the split-site affair. On Sept. 10. 2016, Chocolatito remained at the Forum and won a competitive decision over previously unbeaten Carlos Cuadras, while eight time zones away, GGG recovered from a slow start to TKO Kell Brook in five rounds at the O2 Arena in England.

On March 18, 2017, it was back to MSG for another PPV, and both A-sides were in tough. Golovkin narrowly outpointed Daniel Jacobs in the main event, but Gonzalez wasn’t so lucky, battling through a first-round body shot knockdown and multiple cuts to come out on the wrong side of a controversial decision to Srisaket Sor Rungvisai – losing for the first time as a pro, in his 47th fight.

GGG and Chocolatito fought independently of one another for the next year and a half, before sharing a card one last time on Sept. 15, 2018. On the final HBO Pay-Per-View, at T-Mobile Arena, comebacking Gonzalez opened the four-fight broadcast with a fifth-round TKO win over Moises Fuentes, and in the main event, Golovkin took his first “L,” dropping a disputed majority decision to Canelo.

There’s no particular reason to believe a similar run awaits Boots and Bam – that this is a formula Matchroom will repeat a half-dozen times.

But it doesn’t have to be a one-off, either.

A lot depends on whether Ennis can land the major fights, as Golovkin eventually did. Although, as we saw with GGG and Chocolatito, the combo platter can make sense either way. If Ennis is fighting no-hopers, he could use Rodriguez to make it a palatable doubleheader. If he starts headlining PPVs against elite opponents, Bam could be the perfect value-add in the co-main.

Just as GGG and Chocolatito were, maybe in a couple of years Boots and Bam can be marketed together as arguably the top two P4P fighters in the world. There’s certainly a chance that they’ll be marketed as the two best American fighters alive – a spin K2 was never going to be able to put on GGG and Chocolatito, obviously.

There is a noteworthy crossover between the two card-sharing combinations: Gonzalez is still an active fighter (still a fringe contender for the pound-for-pound list, in fact), and he and Rodriguez sparred together for 24 rounds over three sessions this spring. And, though it’s unlikely based on things both boxers and their teams have said, a fight between the 24-year-old Rodriguez and the 37-year-old Gonzalez is perfectly viable.

If it happens, maybe they’d put it on a card that also features Boots Ennis.

And if all that happens, what better setting could there be for Golovkin – who still hasn’t formally announced his retirement from boxing – to stage a farewell fight?

That’s a whole lotta chocolate dipped in a whole lotta peanut butter.

More immediately, however, and without any if/then statements, we’re just days away from the first Boots-and-Bam doubleheader.

The IBF played a trick on the boxing world with Ennis’ forced opponent. Hopefully Rodriguez can precede that with a treat for fans in his fight against Guevara.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of and the author of 2014’s. He can be reached on or, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.