By Chris Williams: According to Maxboxing.com, WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (28-1, 18 KO’s) won’t be facing Cristian Mijares on July 14th at the Cowboys stadium after all. Instead, the 29-year-old Donaire will be facing IBF super bantamweight champion Jeffry Mathebula (26-3-2, 14 KO’s) on June 30th at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (30-0-1, 22 KO’s) will also be on the card against an opponent still to be determined. The Rios fight will be the first of the card, which sounds about right because it would be more than a little ridiculous to have Rios headlining the card after his controversial 12 round decision win over Richard Abril last April.

Rios put off a lot of people with that win, and really would have been better off in the two judges that gave him the win marked him down as a loser instead. That was a really awful performance from Rios, and I had him losing the fight 9 rounds to 3. Not sure what the judges saw in his performance that made them score the fight for him because I saw him losing the fight by a lopsided decision.

Donaire got marked up a lot by Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. in picking up the World Boxing Organization super bantamweight title last February. It was a weird situation where instead of Donaire facing a fighter that is doing well going into the fight, Donaire fought Vazquez Jr., who had recently been knocked out by Jorge Arce in the 12th round.

Why the WBO permitted Vazquez Jr. to fight for a world title so soon is the big question. I would have liked to have seen another contender to get a shot so that it doesn’t see like musical chairs where a champion is beaten and then almost immediately gets another title shot over other opposition who are well deserving of a title shot.

Not sure I like a fight between Donaire and Mathebula. I see it as another safe fight Donaire is being steered into because I don’t rate Mathebula as a legitimate top 15 contender. I know he’s a champion in the watered down division with four plus champions in each division. However, I’ve never been impressed with Mathebula and I especially wasn’t impressed with his narrow 12 round split decision win over Takalani Ndlovu last March. Mathebula avenged an earlier loss to Ndlovu, but looked hardly impressive.

I’m just wondering why is Donaire being matched against the little known Mathebula instead of a better fighter? If Bob Arum, Donaire’s promoter, wanted to put him in a unification bout, then why didn’t he match him up against the division’s best fighter in WBA super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux instead? I would pick Rigondeaux over Mathebula 7 days a week 365 days a year. Rigondeaux is simply a much more superior fighter than Mathebula. So why is Arum matching Donaire against beatable guys and not the dangerous Ringondeaux?

Is Arum trying to extend Donaire’s time as a champion as long as possible? He’s doing him any real favors because eventually Donaire will have to fight Rigondeaux or else he’s going to take a ton of criticism. And we saw plain and clear that Donaire doesn’t have the size or power to be able to move up in weight to the featherweight division and succeed. A fighter like Orlando Salido would tear Donaire apart. He’s already expressed interest in fighting Donaire but has been ignored. There’s not much you can do with Donaire unless you’re going to keep him at super bantamweight and have him avoid Rigondeaux.