By Chris Williams: Former WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-2, 20 KO’s) claims that WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (12-0, 9 KO’s) didn’t do enough to beat him last Saturday night in their fight at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, New York.
Donaire lost the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision with two of the judges having the fight scored closely with Rigondeaux barely winning by the scores 114-113, 115-112 and 116-111. The sad fact of the matter is that Rigondeaux out-landed Donaire in 11 of the 12 rounds of the fight.
The only round where Donaire landed more punches was in the 10th, which was the round that Donaire knocked Rigondeaux down in. The rest of the rounds, Rigondeaux out-landed Donaire by anywhere from 3 to 15 punches. Not only was Rigondeaux out-landing Donaire, he was also making Donaire miss repeatedly in each round.
That should have counted in the minds of the judges in showing that Rigondeaux had the superior ring generalship because you don’t give rounds to fighters just because they’re coming forward and pressuring. It has to be more than that. They have to actually be landing more punches and Donaire wasn’t doing.
Donaire said to hitfirstboxing.com “I thought he wasn’t better than me tonight. I don’t think he did enough to beat me tonight.”
The fact of the matter is Rigondeaux landed more punches in the fight, so he deserved to win. I hope by now that Donaire has taken the time to see the fight on replay because once he does he’ll realize that he wasn’t the better fighter. He’ll find that he only deserved to win one round of the fight and that’s it.
I’m sure Donaire is thinking of things he could have done differently that would have enabled him to win the fight such as throwing more jabs and punches and pressuring earlier in the fight, but the outcome wouldn’t have been any different. Rigondeaux would have easily made adjustments and continued to dominate the Filipino.
Donaire needs to go back to the drawing board and look to fight easier guys like the ones that his promoter Bob Arum had been matching him against when he was given the Fighter of the Year for 2012. That award seems kind of silly now that Donaire has been badly schooled by Rigondeaux.
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