By Chris Williams: WBA Super World featherweight champion Nonito Donaire (33-2, 21 KO’s) said recently that he would give Simpiwe Vetyeka (26-3, 18 KO’s) a rematch after beating him by a 5 round technical decision to pick up his WBA title last month on May 31st in Macao, China. But Donaire reportedly is leaning in the direction of facing WBA World featherweight champion Nicholas Walters (24-0, 20 KO’s) instead, according to Philboxing.com.
Why the change of mind for Donaire? It’s hard to say, but maybe he realizes it was going to be tough trying to beat Vetyeka in a rematch, and that he would be better off moving on against Walters.
Winning a world title in a fight that only lasted 5 rounds is kind of disappointing, because we’re talking about a decision, not a knockout. Boxing needs to change the rules to prevent champions from losing their title in fights where it does to the cards after less than 12 rounds. Those fights should be no contests, because they don’t tell you anything at all other than who had the lead at the time. It’s got to be sad for Vetyeka to lose his WBA title in that manner, and then possibly not getting a rematch after Donaire said repeatedly that he was going to give him a rematch.
Walters destroyed Vic Darchinyan by a 5th round knockout on the same card as the Donaire-Vetyeka. It was an impressive performance by Walters, because he was much too big, too strong and too young for Darchinyan to handle. When you compare how easily Walters beat Darchinyan and look at the problems that Donaire had with beating him last year, it tells you that Donaire is going to have a ton of problems when/if he faces the hard hitting Walters.
Donaire plans on staying at featherweight for 1-2 more fights before moving up to super featherweight. He wants to keep moving up all the way to 140. It seems pretty obvious that if Donaire can make it all the way to the light welterweight division without getting knocked out along the way, he’d then be put in with Manny Pacquiao for a career payday. But for that fight to happen, Donaire is going to need to move quickly through the weight classes and not stay at any one weight for more than 1-2 fights.
The super featherweight division is a rather weak one, and it’s possible that Donaire can pick up a paper title as long as he avoids the good champions like Takashi Uchiyama and Mikey Garcia. But once Donaire reaches the lightweight division, he’s going to have problems unless he can get to WBC lightweight champion Omar Figueroa before the other fighters do. That’s the only beatable champion at lightweight. Donaire can’t compete against Miguel Vazquez, Richard Abril or Terence Crawford because they’re too big and rangy for him.
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