By Dan Ambrose: The 5’5 ½” WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s) looked like a giant standing next to the 5’4 ½” WBA super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) in their press conference on Thursday to announcement their April 13th fight at the Radio City Music Hall, in New York, New York, USA. The fight will be taking place and there will be the drug testing that Donaire wanted.
Donaire said “Rigondeaux has accomplished a lot and I respect him for what he’s accomplished. On April 13th, we will learn who the best fighter is at 122. Rigondeaux is a great fighter, but he still lacks experience [at the pro level]. Rigondeaux is a great fighter, but I believe in myself.”
Rigondeaux had over 400 fights as an amateur and won two Olympic gold medals. He doesn’t have experience in fighting a lot of 10 to 12 round fights, but he’s faced guys every bit as good, if not better, than the fighters that Donaire has fought during his career. Lack of experience isn’t Rigondeaux’s problem in this fight. It’s his lack of height compared to Donaire. Donaire clearly is a lot taller than the listed 5’5 ½” height, as he appears to be every bit as tall as Rigondeaux’s last opponent, the 5’8” Robert Marroquin.
The only question is how much will Donaire rehydrate after making the 122 pound weight limit. Donaire looked like he was close to 140 lbs. Donaire looked like a solid 140, which means that he’s probably not going to lose too much weight before their fight in April, and I would suspect that he’ll drop 15 pounds of water and they rehydrate up close to 140.
Rigondeaux isn’t going to be able to do that. He looked like he wasn’t even at 130 during the press conference, so he’s probably going to be giving up at least 10 pounds, possibly more to Donaire. When you add the height and reach advantage that Donaire has over Rigondeaux, it’s going to be tough for the Cuban to win this fight. Donaire is just so huge at super bantamweight. It’ll change when he moves up to featherweight, but in the 122 lb. class, Donaire is just so much bigger than most of the guys he’s fighting.
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