By Chris Williams: Nonito Donaire will be moving back down to the super bantamweight division in his next fight on March 28th at the Mall of Asia in Pasay City in the Philippines.
Donaire will be fighting William Prado, a tune-up opponent to help Donaire regain his confidence following his 6th round knockout loss to WBA featherweight champion Nicholas Walters in his last fight in October of last year.
Donaire’s promoter Bob Arum thinks that he’ll be able to resurrect his career by moving back down to the 122 pound division. Arum figures that the former four division world champion Donaire will be able to turn things around when he gets back to his old weight class.
At one time, Donaire was considered by some boxing fans to be the best fighter in the division. However, these fans gave Donaire’s the status as the top guy at 122 without him having fought Guillermo Rigondeaux, the tough Cuban. Once the two of faced each other, Donaire suffered an embarrassing defeat in 2013, and never attempted to avenge the loss.
“Nonito is very determined to re-establish his career and he believes 122 pounds is the perfect weight for him,” Arum said via Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.
I don’t know that the super bantamweight division is the perfect weight division for Donaire now. It’s obviously a better division for him compared to him fighting at featherweight, but I don’t see it being the perfect division.
Donaire is older now and the division has improved since he was briefly one of the champions in this weight class. The perfect weight divisions for Donaire are the bantamweight and super flyweight divisions.
Unfortunately for Donaire, he can’t make either of those weight classes now, so he’s pretty well stuck fighting at super bantamweight if he can make weight for this division. That still hasn’t been established yet. All we know is that Donaire had to drain down from the 140s to make weight the last time he fought at 122 in his loss to Rigondeaux.
Donaire’s fight against Prado will show nothing about whether Donaire can hang with the big boys at 122. The only thing that fight will prove is that Donaire can beat a 2nd tier fighter that his promoter Bob Arum picked out for him to beat. At Donaire’s age, he doesn’t move as well as he used to, and that means he has to take a lot more shots compared to earlier in his career.
It means that Donaire is going to have to take the heavy shots from the more powerful super bantamweights like Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg. Luckily for Donaire, he doesn’t have to worry about fighting Leo Santa Cruz or Rigondeauix.
Those are two opponents that Arum likely will keep Donaire far away from for the remainder of his career. Arum will likely steer Donaire in the direction of the WBC title to go after the belt once Santa Cruz moves up in weight to fight at featherweight. That’s Donaire’s best chance of winning a world title at 122, because he would likely lose to Frampton and Quigg, and we already saw what Rigondeaux did to him.
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