Daniel Ponce de León

Amateur career Ponce de León was a Mexican National Amateur champion and a bronze medalist at the 1999 Pan American Games. He then went on to represent Mexico at the 2000 Summer Olympics, where he was defeated in the first round by Ukraine's Volodymyr Sydorenko.

WBO junior featherweight champion On October 29, 2005 he defeated Sod Kokietgym by unanimous decision, handing Looknongyangtoy his first career loss. He has defended his WBO junior featherweight title eight times against Gerson Guerrero, Reynaldo Lopez, Sod Kokietgym twice, Al Seeger, Gerry Peñalosa, Rey Bautista and Eduardo Escobedo. Ponce de León's first loss was a unanimous decision loss to Celestino Caballero on February 17, 2005.

Ponce de León retained his title against Eduardo Escobedo on December 8, 2007 via unanimous decision, as part of the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr.–Ricky Hatton fight. On June 7, 2008 Ponce de León was defeated by technical knockout in the first round by Juan Manuel López, losing his WBO Super Bantamweight title.

Ponce de León was the headliner of a sold out Golden Boy show and inched closer to another world title shot by knocking out Puerto Rican, Orlando Cruz. Ponce de León defeated Cornelius Lock on May 1, 2010 the undercard of Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Shane Mosley in the MGM Grand Garden Arena on HBO PPV to retain his WBC Latino featherweight title.

Super featherweight contention On March 5, 2011, Ponce de León moved up to the super featherweight division to face undefeated prospect Adrien Broner. The fight was expected to be a showcase bout for the younger and larger Broner, however, Ponce de León proved to be more competitive than anticipated as Broner was awarded a highly disputed ten round unanimous decision.

WBC featherweight champion In an upset, Ponce de León emerged victorious over WBC featherweight champion Jhonny Gonzalez, coming away with an eighth-round unanimous technical decision victory before a sold-out crowd at a Showtime-televised event at the MGM Grand.

The bout ended when a nasty gash emerged over the right eye of Gonzalez (52–8, 45 KOs), of Mexico City, after which it was determined that Gonzalez could not continue, they went to the scorecards and he won via: 79–72, 79–72, 77–74, all for Ponce de León. Ponce de León fought Abner Mares in the Mayweather-Guerrero undercard on May 4, 2013 and got knocked down in the second and ninth rounds en route to a TKO loss at 2:20 of the ninth round, losing his WBC featherweight title in the process.

Professional boxing record

Exhibition boxing record