By Chris Williams: If Nonito Donaire (32-2, 21 KO’s) wants to save himself a lot of pain and suffering he’ll forget all about fighting in the featherweight division and opt to stay at super bantamweight where he at least has a chance to still be a world champion as long as he steers away from WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux.
Donaire’s fight against a smallish bantamweight-sized Vic Darchinyan last Saturday night told you all you need to know about what Donaire’s chances will be if and when he moves up to featherweight.
The guys that Donaire will be fighting at featherweight make Darchinyan look like a little guy in comparison in terms of power and size. Donaire plans on targeting the winner of the Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Orlando Salido fight. It doesn’t take a genius to see that Donaire will be destroyed by either of those guys. Both of them are too skilled and too powerful for Donaire. The same with WBC champion Jhonny Gonzalez.
With his one-punch power, he’d have Donaire in trouble with the first shot that he hits him with. You heard Donaire say after the Darchnyan fight last night that he was thinking of quitting due to the pain in his cheek after getting hit hard by Darchinyan. Now what will happen if Jhonny Gonzalez nails Donaire with a hard shot, not that his promoter Bob Arum is going to steer Donaire towards a fight with Gonzalez. It appears that they want to have Donaire fight Salido or Lomachenko. It doesn’t matter. Those guys are as equally dangerous as Gonzalez and capable of working Donaire over for 12 rounds or likely stopping him.
My recommendation is for Donaire to get a good dietician that can work with him to lose the flab on his midsection so that he can continue to fight at super bantamweight, because that’s pretty much his best and only shot at ever being a world champion again. Really, Donaire would be better off dieting down to bantamweight, because he would dominate at that division with his height and power. Super bantamweight is now kind of an iffy thing for Donaire die to Rigondeaux holding down two of the belts, Leo Santa Cruz possessing the WBC strap and Kiko Martinez holding the IBF belt.
All three of those champions can punch and none of them would be a sure thing for Donaire. We already know that Rigondeaux is better than Donaire. I rate Santa Cruz as better than him as well. Kiko Martinez would be a 50-50 fight for Donaire due to Martinez’s huge power. I think Donaire would be better off skipping this weight division altogether and instead moving down to bantamweight where he would compete against the following champions: Shinsuke Yamanaka, Anselmo Moreno, and Tomoki Kameda.
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