By Chris Williams: Photo credit Naoki Fakuda – Top Rank Promoter Bob Arum was all grins after his fighter Nonito Donaire (26-1, 18 KO’s) stopped WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Fernando Montiel in a 2nd round last Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Arum, who also promotes Manny Pacquiao, sees great things in Donaire after doing little with him for the past three years after his win over Vic Darchinyan.

Sadly, this was Donaire’s first big fight since 2007, and it’s incredible that he had to wait this long to finally get put in with someone that boxing fans actually care about. Donaire did his part, stretching Montiel with a hard left hook to the head in the 2nd. Montiel got up but was stopped immediately after getting hit with two more shots from Donaire.

Arum, ecstatic about possibly having another Manny Pacquiao-type fighter in the making, said this in an article by Nick Giongco at the Manila Bulletin: “He can win the 122 (super-bantamweight) title, go up to 126 lbs (featherweight) and 130 (super-featherweight).”

Arum might be right about that, but he may have to pick and choose the weaker champions at featherweight to get Donaire to win a title at featherweight because there are some quality fighters at that weight. Donaire can probably win a title against one of the weaker champions in the featherweight and super featherweight divisions if Arum carefully matches Donaire the same way that he’s matched Pacquiao against some of the guys he’s faced for titles. Who knows? We may see the ugly catch weight rear its ugly head if Donaire starts to get more popular. He may be able to use his popularity to get one of the featherweights or super featherweights to meet him at a nice catch weight so there’s a weight handicap for him. In that respect, I can see Donaire then taking after Pacquiao and becoming a smaller version of him.