Rigondeaux completely took away Donaire’s left hook, says Cunningham

By Boxing News - 04/15/2013 - Comments

rigondeaux111`By Chris Williams: Kevin Cunningham, the trainer for IBF welterweight champion Devon Alexander, was mesmerized by the incredibly impressive performance by WBA super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (12-0, 8 KO’s) last Saturday night in him defeating the heavily hyped WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-2, 20 KO’s) and making him look like a rank amateur in beating him by what should have been a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision.

In particular, Cunningham was impressive with the way that Rigondeaux completely shut down Donaire’s powerful left hook that he’d used to knockout many of his previous opponents.

Rigondeaux was able to take away Donaire’s left hook completely. The only time he did land it was when he shoved Rigondeaux in the 10th and hit him when he wasn’t ready.

Cunningham said to RingTV “He [Cunningham] controlled the fight, and he punished Donaire with sharp shots when he wanted to. He totally disarmed Donaire’s left hook. I mean, he took his left hook away from him.”

It was exactly how I thought the fight would go. I knew that Donaire is a very average fighter if you take away his main weapon in his left hook. His right hand is nothing special. Indeed, once Donaire’s left hook was completely neutralized by Rigondeaux, Donaire had nothing else to fall back on. He wasn’t going to be able to hurt him with his harmless right hands that Donaire can only land in a short, chopping fashion.

If you watch Donaire’s fights you’ll notice that Donaire never throws long right hands. Instead, it’s always short right hands, and that wasn’t going to work against Rigondeaux because he was frequently on the outside. As such, Donaire couldn’t use his left hook and nor his right hand. There was nothing Donaire could do but plod slowly after Rigondeaux and look incredibly silly each time he’d throw a big left hook and miss by a mile.

Rigondeaux was just perfect with the way that he took Donaire’s left hook away. It was like watching a professor schooling a student that was a slow in the uptake. Donaire just wasn’t learning anything in there and Rigondeaux clowned him every step of the way.

The judging was the only disappointment in the fight because two of them had the fight scored 114-113 and 115-112. In other words, one judge had Rigondeaux winning 7 rounds to 5, and the other 8 rounds to 4. I’m sorry but I can’t see how Donaire won more than two rounds at the most and I’m talking charity in giving him two rounds. He deserved the round in the 10th when he knocked Rigondeaux with a cheap shot, but other than that it was totally one-sided.



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