By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is in a bind. On one hand he’s got a fighter that many boxing fans feel is the best super bantamweight in the division in WBA champ Guillermo Rigondeaux, but he’s not a big money maker. And then on the other Arum has a fighter that is probably a couple of steps below Rigondeaux in talent in IBF/WBA super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire, but he’s a proven moneymaker due to the large amount of Filipino fans that he attracts when he fights.

The obvious that for Arum to do would be to match Donaire and Rigondeaux up against each other to make a big fight and so that Arum can make boatloads of cash for himself and for the fighters. But some reason that’s not happening. Arum isn’t making the Donaire-Rigondeaux fight and he’s probably not going to make the fight even if Rigondeaux resigns with Top Rank for certain amount of years.

I think have an idea why Arum isn’t going to make that fight. If Donaire was the guy that looked to be the better fighter, I think would make the fight in a second, because there wouldn’t be a huge blow to him if Rigondeaux got beat by Donaire. After all, Rigondeaux isn’t a big moneymaker. However, with Rigondeaux looking a lot better than Donaire right now it suggests that things might go badly if Arum would dare to put Donaire in with Rigondeaux. I think not only would Donaire lose the fight, he’d possibly get humiliated in a one-sided loss.

That in turn would very likely put a damper on Donaire’s moneymaking ability, at least short term until he was able to beat enough smaller guys like Jorge Arce, Omar Narvaez and Fernando Montiel to make his fans forget about his one-sided loss to Rigondeaux. It wouldn’t be fatal for Donaire to get whipped by Rigondeaux, because his fans are loyal, and will soon be back. But I have a feeling that Arum doesn’t want even a short term drop off in Donaire’s ability to make the green stuff. As such. I think Arum is going to keep Donaire far, far away from Rigondeaux until the Cuban fighter starts losing his skills like Shane Mosley or if Donaire no longer has it himself and it’s time to cash out on him.

I could be wrong but this is what I feel is what is getting in the way of a Donaire-Rigondeaux fight. I don’t think it’s all Arum, though, either. Arum possibly could be doing the old fight-marinating bit like he tried to do with Juan Manuel Lopez and Yuriorkis Gamboa. Arum waited for ages for both fighters to get more popular with the boxing public because he wanted to build the fight up so that it would make more cash. Unfortunately, Arum waited so long that Lopez got knocked out by Orlando Salido. After that fight, Lopez once again got knocked out by Salido, which removed any chance of Lopez and Gamboa ever fighting for the kind of cash that they could have made had Arum just let the fight happen to begin with. Arum could be doing this with Donaire and Rigondeaux, but I seriously doubt it. I think it’s more of a situation where Donaire makes good cash no matter who he’s matched up against. He doesn’t need to be put in with Rigondeaux, and that probably would be the worse thing for him because the chances are incredibly high that he’d exposed.

You can tell just by listening to Donaire’s comments that he’s not eager to get in the ring with Rigondeaux. If he doesn’t want it and his promoter doesn’t push the issue, we’re not going to see the fight and that’s too bad for boxing fans. Instead of seeing Donaire-Rigondeaux, we’ll have to be satisfied with seeing Donaire fight smaller guys like Arce or tall skinny guys with no power like Jeffrey Mathebula.