By Chris Williams: Bob Arum of Top Rank was reportedly impressed with what he saw of Abner Mares last Saturday night in Mare’s win over Eric Morel to claim the vacant WBC super bantamweight title. However, as impressed as he was in Mares’ performance, Arum isn’t willing to match him up against his fighter WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire.

Arum has a string of other arguably easier options for Donaire, starting with former super flyweight champion Cristian Mijares, who Arum plans on matching against Donaire on July 14th at the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. That’s a pretty safe fight for Donaire, and that may be what he needs right now because Donaire took a great deal of punishment in his last fight against Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. last February.

That was a fight where Donaire once again failed to shine. In his previous fight against Omar Narvaez, Donaire had an excuse for looking so terrible in that Narvaez fought a defensive fight. But against Vazquez Jr., Donaire looked even more terrible. He came up with an excuse after the fight about having injured his left hand, but the excuses are starting to get tiresome already. Donaire flat out stunk and Arum may need to keep him away from the better fighters like Mares from now on if he wants to get the most mileage he can out of the Donaire gravy train.

Arum said to RingTV “Just because Mares calls out a guy [Donaire] who is at the top of the line, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen right away. There’s a waiting list.”

The waiting list for Donaire is Mijares and Jorge Arce for starters. After those two fights are out of the way, Arum will likely pick out some other beatable opponents between the super flyweight and super bantamweight division. I don’t see him letting Donaire face a featherweight because it’s pretty clear he’d get smoked if he fought anyone good at that weight like Orlando Salido.

Forget a waiting list, I don’t think Arum is serious about Mares being under consideration for a fight against Donaire. I see Donaire being protected and milked against weaker opposition than Mares for the remainder of his career.