Mares wants Donaire fight, but it’s not likely to happen

By Boxing News - 11/11/2012 - Comments

Image: Mares wants Donaire fight, but it's not likely to happenBy Dan Ambrose: WBC super bantamweight champion Abner Mares (25-0-1, 13 KO’s) is pushing for a unification bout against WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (30-1, 19 KO’s) after Mares defeated Anselmo Moreno (33-2-1, 12 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision last night in a fight televised by Showtime from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.

Mares wants the Donaire fight and wasn’t going to be pacified by being asked if he wanted to fight a more realistic opponent in IBF bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz, who fought on the undercard last night.

The problem that Mares has is that there’s a huge obstacle that’s in the way of him fighting Donaire and that’s with Donaire fighting for Top Rank and Mares for Golden Boy Promotions. That right there pretty much makes it impossible for either fighter to meet in a fight until one of them leaves their current promoters. It’s not possible for Mares to wait out Donaire because his contract with Top Rank won’t be up anytime soon.

Another problem that makes it impossible for Mares and Donaire to fight is that Donaire fights for HBO, while Mares for Showtime. According to Steven Kim, both networks have put a lot of their money into these fighters and it’s likely next to impossible for a fight between them to be made because one of the networks would likely lose out in that happening. As such, boxing fans are going to have to be content to see Donaire fight other guys not with Golden Boy Promotions, and Mares is going to have to be content with whatever fights his promoters can find for him. Perhaps it’s not a bad idea for Mares to fight a guy like Santa Cruz. In the absence of any other big name opponents a fight against Santa Cruz isn’t such a bad idea.

Mares needs to clean up his habit of throwing low blows because he got away with a lot of them last night in beating Moreno. We saw Moreno get a point taken off for pulling down on Mares’ head in the 11th, but then we didn’t see Mares lose points for the constant low blows he threw in the fight. It was like we were watching Mares’ first fight with Joseph Agbeko, where the referee that worked that fight failed to take away any points from Mares despite warning over and over again about throwing low blows.

Last night, we saw referee Raul Caiz Jr. warning Mares for throwing constant low blows, but then he failed to do anything about it when Mares continued to throw them. Mares needs to either stop throwing body punches or learn how to keep them from straying low so often.



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