By Chris Williams: Vic Darchinyan (39-5-1, 28 KO’s) has taken an idea from Brandon Rios by deciding that he not only wants to beat Nonito Donaire (31-2, 20 KO’s) tonight, he wants to send Donaire into retirement. That’s been Rios’ battle cry for his fight this month against Manny Pacquiao in Macao, China. Rios wants to beat Pacquiao so badly that he’ll give up the sport and retire to politics.
Donaire and Darchinyan will be facing each other on HBO at the American Bank Center, in Corpus Christi, Texas, USA. HBO blessed the fight despite the fact that Darchinyan has already been knocked out by Donaire six years ago and he’s also lost two out of his last four fights. You have to wonder why HBO said yes to this fight because it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense because the fight has mismatch written all over regardless of what Darchinyan says.
Darchinyan said “Rigondeaux schooled him. I’m going to finish him and send him into retirement.”
There’s no question that Rigondeaux did badly school Donaire in making him look really bad last April. The things were hearing as to why Donaire isn’t fighting Rigondeaux again instead of a clearly past his best Darchinyan is that Donaire is coming off of shoulder surgery, and he needs a tune-up bout instead of another tough fight against Rigondeaux. However, we still likely won’t see Donaire facing Rigondeaux again after tonight’s fight because Donaire is saying that he wants to fight for the title against newly crowned WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido now that he’s beaten Orlando Cruz.
It’s likely that win or lose, Donaire still won’t fight Rigondeaux. That’s a bad fight for Donaire because the Cuban is so much better than him that there’s nothing Donaire can do other than to try and wait Rigondeaux until he gets old before fighting him again.
If Darchinyan is going to beat Donaire and send him into retirement tonight, then he’s going to have to go after him and look to KO him, because if he merely beats Donaire by a decision then that could lead to Donaire feeling he should have gotten the win. Donaire felt that he deserved the victory over Rigondeaux, and if he feels that he won a fight that was as one-sided as it was, then we could see the same from him tonight if he gets beaten by Darchinyan.
One thing that Darchinyan has going for him in this fight is that Donaire seems to have put a little bit of a stomach on him in the past year. That wasn’t there the previous time they fought in 2007, and it can’t help him any. Donaire has gained weight but it obviously hasn’t been all muscle weight that he’s put on judging by the flab on his lower abdomen.
Darchinyan will be fighting Donaire at featherweight after failing to get him to agree to a catch-weight. Donaire absolutely wanted the fight to take place at the full featherweight limit because he’s having a hard time making super bantamweight now. But the question why did Donaire pick a super bantamweight to fight instead of a featherweight?
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