(Photo credit: Adrian Hernandez) By Chris Williams: Nonito Donaire faces Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. tonight in moving up in weight to fight for the vacant WBO super bantamweight title at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.

Donaire expects to win the fight but he may come up short here, as Vazquez can really punch and if there’s a weakness to Donaire’s game, it’s his dislike for tasting hard leather. We’ve seen Donaire run when he gets hit in previous fights and this could be what happens tonight if Vazquez Jr. is able to put hands on Donaire.

Tonight’s crowd at the Alamodome could be as high as 13,000, which would make the promoter for this event, Bob Arum, extremely happy. Thus far it’s been pretty much nothing but sick mismatches on the undercard with a bunch of guys I’ve never even heard of scoring 1st round knocks and junior middleweight contender Vanes Martirosyan beating a 41-year-old Troy Lowry by a 3rd round TKO in another one of the mismatches. I sure hope the Doniare-Vazquez Jr. fight turns out to be good because this card is god awful so far.

Vazquez Jr. could open up some eyes tonight by pulling off an upset over Donaire. I wouldn’t be surprised because I thought Donaire looked awful in his last fight against Omar Narvaez. I like the excuses that came after the fight where Donaire blamed his opponent for his own bad performance. That’s a new one. Instead of admitting that you did poorly, you blame your opponent for shutting down your offense. If anything, Donaire should have been complimenting the guy and figuring out what he did wrong instead of pushing the blame on Narvaez.

Vazquez Jr. needs to learn from Narvaez in what he did to shut Donaire down. We saw pretty clearly that once Donaire’s left hook is shut down, he doesn’t have much to offer. He’s a one-trick pony, who does well against smaller guys and fighters that don’t have a clue in how to stop a left hook.