Garcia: Donaire is too big and strong for Rigondeaux

By Boxing News - 02/26/2013 - Comments

donaire88By Chris Williams: Trainer Robert Garcia doesn’t see the April 13th unification fight between his fighter WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s) and WBA champ Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) as being a competitive one despite feels from boxing fans that the Filipino Donaire has finally met his match with the tough body-punching Cuban.

Garcia sees the fight in simple terms – Donaire will win because he’s bigger and stronger than Rigondeaux. In other words, Donaire’s brawn will be too much for Rigondeaux to handle in this fight.

Garcia said to philboxing.com Donaire is “too big and too strong and the first time Nonito lands the left hook it should be over.”

It looks like Garcia is seeing Rigondeaux in the same class as Donaire’s last two opponents Jorge Arce and Toshiaki Nishioka, a couple of aging fighters that didn’t have good defensive skills nor power to compete with Donaire.

It was great match-making by Donaire’s promoter Bob Arum to select a couple of older fighters for Donaire to fight, but it tells you absolutely nothing at all about what Donaire can do against Rigondeaux because he’s so much better than Arce and Nishioka.

If Rigondeaux had fought those guys he’d have done the same thing that Arce did, so it’s irrelevant that Donaire was able to beat them because it proves only that Donaire could beat a couple of aging fighters that would have lost just as badly to Rigondeaux.

Donaire does have a three inch height advantage over the 5’4” Rigondeaux, but that’s still not going to be a big deal because Donaire only has one weapon in his toolbox and that’s his left hook. Rigondeaux knows that, and he’s going to take that punch away from Donaire and force him to use his right hand for everything he does in this fight.

Donaire is a pretty limited fighter when his left hook is taken away from him. Omar Narvaez, Rafael Concepcion and Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. were able to neutralize Donaire’s left hook and give him problems.

Donaire and Rigondeaux will meet on April 13th at the Radio City Music Hall, in New York, New York, USA. As I’ve said before, this is an extremely odd location for the fight because it almost guarantees a low turnout for the fight because New York doesn’t have a huge Filipino population compared to California, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the fight draws less than 2000 fans.



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