Donaire’s April 13th at Madison Square Garden in New York

By Boxing News - 02/04/2013 - Comments

donaire34By Chris Williams: WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire’s April 13th fight will likely wind up at Madison Square Garden in New York, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. New York is an odd place to stage Donaire’s next fight because New York doesn’t have a large population of Filipinos, which is where a lot of Donaire’s fans come from in the United States.

The largest population of Filipinos in the U.S is in California with close to 1.5 million. It doesn’t make sense for Donaire to fight in New York unless his promoter Bob Arum is going to put him in with a New York based fighter.

WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux is Cuban, and Florida is where most of the Cubans are in the United States. Florida is obviously close to New York, but it still doesn’t make sense to stage the fight in New York when you’ve got a huge Filipino population in the Los Angeles, California area.

That would make the most sense for any of Donaire’s fights in the U.S. I’m not sure what Arum is thinking by putting Donaire in New York. Maybe he’s got someone else in mind besides Rigondeux for Donaire’s April 13th fight date.

If it’s 37-year-old Vic Darchinyan then it still doesn’t make sense to stage the fight in New York because Los Angles, California has the largest population of Armenians in the U.S. That’s where the fight should take place.

Either Arum has someone else in mind for Donaire on April 13th or he does not understand the demographics clearly for where he’s staging the fight. Putting Donaire in New York probably won’t sell too many tickets unless you stick him on undercard of a popular East Coast fighter like Miguel Cotto, but that’s not going to happen. I can’t picture Donaire as a main event fighter in New York, I just can’t.



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