By Chris Williams: Nonito Donaire (32-2, 21 KO’s) will be back in the ring in April or May and will be challenging newly crowned WBA featherweight champion Simpiwe Vetyeka (26-2, 16 KO’s) in attempt to capture a 4th division World title. Donaire has already won World titles at flyweight, bantamweight and super bantamweight.
Donaire finally met his match in getting easily beaten by WBA super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux last year in April, and he hasn’t appeared eager to get back in the ring with the Cuban defensive artist. Instead of fighting Rigondeaux again, Donaire moved up to the featherweight division, and in his first fight at that weight, Donaire fought super bantamweight Vic Darchinyan.
Donaire stopped Darchinyan in the 9th round, but it was a much harder fight than expected, as Donaire took a great deal of punishment before halting the 38-year-old Darchinyan. Donaire suffered a slight fracture of his right orbital bone in the fight, and he’s decided to try and let it heal without surgery. Whether that was the right move or not will be determined by whether he gets clearance to fight in April or May when he gets back in the ring to fight Vetyeka for his WBA title.
The Donaire-Vetyeka fight will take place in Macau, China, according to the Manila Standard. That’s not the best possible location for the fight, though, because we just saw Manny Pacquiao bring in really poor pay-per-view results in his fight against Brandon Rios last November. Since Donaire doesn’t gain any real advantage in terms of his taxes by him fighting in Macau, he’s probably better off fighting in the U.S rather than China. Donaire’s money will be taxed by the U.S even with the fight taking place in China. Now if he was from a different country, then it would be an advantage for him to fight in Macau, because he could dodge the U.S taxes by having it take place in that tax-friendly country, but that’s not the case. Donaire should probably tell Bob Arum that he doesn’t want to fight in Macau and risk having poor ratings for his fight.
Before Donaire’s fight against Darchinyan, the plan for Donaire was to fight the WBA regular featherweight champion Nicholas Walters for his WBA paper title. But with Vetyeka getting the Super World featherweight title that previously belonged to Chris John, this title is obviously the more prestigous, even though Vetyeka is still considered by many fans to be well below the other three featherweight champions Evgeny Gradovich, Orlando Salido and Jhonny Gonzalez in the talent department. However, Donaire would likely be beaten by all three of those champions, so Bob Arum is being smart by matching Donaire against the perceived weak-link among the four featherweight champions.
Vetyeka stopped a past his best Chris John in the 6th round in his last fight in December. John looked totally shot in that fight so it wasn’t surprising that Vetyeka was able to beat him.
It’s going to be interesting to see if Donaire tries to move up to the super featherweight division to try and win another World title if he can capture Vetyeka’s strap. I wouldn’t recommend that he do that, because I wouldn’t give him much of a chance at winning a belt at that weight unless they’re going to match him against another weak champion just to capture another paper title.
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