By Chris Williams: This Saturday night HBO will have one of their better co-feature bouts when WBA Super World featherweight champion Nonito Donaire (33-2, 21 KOs) goes up against WBA champion Nicholas Walters (24-0, 20 KOs) at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Donaire, 31, is considered the favorite as of now, but more and more boxing fans believe that this fight is Walters to win due to his youth, size, power, defense and boxing skills.
Donaire hasn’t really looked good in a couple of years, and he was fortunate that he wasn’t forced to go the distance with his last opponent Simpiwe Vetyeka, because there’s no telling what would have happened had that fight gone the distance.
Donaire said he couldn’t see out of a cut eye and that fight was stopped in the 5th, luckily for Donaire.
Walters has respect for Donaire, but he doesn’t see him being able to go the full distance with hm. He expects to catch Donaire with a big shot and then take him out just as he did Vic Darchinyan in his last fight in May of this year in Macao, China.
“Beating Donaire is an A,” Walters said to esnewsreporting. “Knocking him out is an A +. I’m going to be going for an A +. He’s a good fighter, a fighter of the year, but he’s standing in my way so I have to get him out of my way. He needs to respect me because I’m a champion, but he’s also a champion. I wouldn’t say it would be an upset [if Walters beats Donaire]. I believe I’m a better fighter. I think I’m ready for this. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time. I don’t see this fight going 12 rounds. I just can’t picture this fight going 12 rounds,” Walters said.”
Donaire is going to be getting hit a lot by Walters in this fight, and Donaire is not a true featherweight like Walters. I doubt Donaire will be able to take getting hit by a big puncher like Walters for long without getting knocked out. Donaire is someone who had to move up in weight due to him putting on weight as he’d aged. He doesn’t look more powerful at featherweight than he was when he fought in the bantamweight and super bantamweight divisions.
This could be Walter’s coming out party on Saturday night with him taking Donaire’s scalp in front of a nationwide audience watching on HBO Championship Boxing. It’s hard to know what Donaire’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank will be able to do in order to try and turn Donaire’s career around if he loses to Walters. I would suspect that Arum would have Donaire go after the Top Rank promoted IBF champion Evgeny Gradovich.
If Donaire couldn’t win that fight then he’d have pretty much no other choice but to move back down to super bantamweight to see if he can recapture one of his old titles. I wish him luck trying to do that because he would need to beat Guillermo Rigondeaux in order to do that, and it’s pretty clear that Rigondeaux is a much better fighter than Donaire as he showed last year in beating him decisively.
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