Narvaez easily took away Donaire’s left hook

By Boxing News - 10/24/2011 - Comments

Image: Narvaez easily took away Donaire's left hookBy Chris Williams: WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire seems to be putting the blame on his stinker of a 12 round decision solely in the lap of his smaller undersized opponent 5’3″ Omar Narvaez for their painfully boring decision last Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Donaire said this after the fight as quoted by ringtv: ” I was willing to get hit. I wanted to bring an old school fighter mentality for the fans at the garden. The fans didn’t deserve and I apologize deeply.”

That sounds to me like Donaire is blaming Narvaez for the lack of action. While I do agree that Narvaez fought a safety first fight, I think Donaire wasn’t exactly going all out taking risks either. I’ve now seen the fight twice and I may be going blind but it sure looks to me like Donaire is pecking away on the outside throwing punch at a time and not rushing forward to throw power shots and combinations.

Donaire fought in the opposite of an old school style, which is why I thinks it’s laughable that Donaire is saying “I was willing to get hit.” If that was the case then Donaire should have been all over Narvaez. This isn’t all on Narvaez. If you’ve got an opponent reluctant to mix it up, you always have the option of rushing them and firing combintions. That’s not what I saw from Donaire in this fight. He seemed to fight down to the style of his opponent.

What I noticed was that Narvaez took away Donaire’s left hook that he likes to use to stun his opponents with. That’s Donaire’s best weapon and I’ve been surprised that other fighters haven’t nullified fight it the way that Narvaez did. All he did was keep his guard high and pick off left hook every time Donaire would throw it.

Without the ability to land his left hook, Donaire was like a bird with only one wing, and unable to fly. Narvaez took away Donaire’s best weapon and what we saw was that Donaire is a pretty limited fighter offensively once his left hook has been taken away. Donaire had nothing else to fall back and he sure as heck wasn’t going forward trying to blast away with combinations.

In the end, Donaire opted to take the safe route by pecking away at Narvaez with jabs and single right hands with a very rare left hook getting through. Most of Donaire’s shots either missed by a mile or were picked off. As for Donaire’s left hook, it hit mostly glove all night long.



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