By Scott Gilfoid: Unless Carl Frampton and his manager Barry McGuigan step up to the plate to negotiate a contract soon, WBA World super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg (31-0-2, 23 KOs) could wind up facing former four division world champion Nonito Donaire (35-3, 23 KOs) later this year.
Quigg’s promoter Eddie Hearn wants to match Quigg against the 32-year-old Donaire in November or December of this year if he can work out a deal with Donaire’s promoters at Top Rank. However, they want to have Donaire face Quigg in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, but Hearn is looking to stage the fight in Manchester, where Quigg has a huge fan base and can attract large crowds of people to come see him fight.
“We are very close to the Donaire fight,” Donaire said via the mirror.co.uk. “That’s a real possibility for November, December,” Hearn said to the mirror.co.uk. They are talking about Dubai, but I’d like to do it in Manchester. It’s a pay-per-view fight and if that’s the case, then we can definitely bring it here.”
Donaire is going to be pure trouble for the likes of Quigg, who is easy to hit and not all that fast. Donaire is still a tremendous puncher, and we saw how Quigg struggled badly the last time he fought a talented fighter in Yoandris Salinas. Donaire is a lot better than Salinas, and therefore I suspect he’ll be a lot better than Quigg.
Donaire isn’t the first option that Hearn has. He wants to match Quigg against Frampton next, especially after seeing how dreadful Frampton looked last Saturday afternoon in his fight against 22-year-old Alejandro Gonzalez Jr. in El Paso, Texas.
Frampton won the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision but he was knocked down twice by Gonzalez Jr. in the 1st round of that fight and had to rally back to get the victory. Hearn feels that if Frampton was getting dropped by the likes of Gonzalez Jr., who isn’t a big puncher, then Quigg should be able to do a number on him when he gets him inside the ring.
With Frampton saying after the fight that he’s thinking of moving up to the featherweight division to face the likes of Leo Santa Cruz, Abner Mares and Gary Russell Jr., Hearn smells fear. He thinks that Frampton is now having second thoughts of fighting Quigg after getting dropped twice by a lesser puncher than him.
Hearn feels that Frampton is running from the fight against Quigg by looking to move up to the safety of the featherweight division.
I don’t see Frampton being able to succeed at 126 in the featherweight division. I think the 5’4” Frampton is much too short to be competing with the monsters in that division, and I suspect he’ll come back down in weight once he gets whipped for the first time.
We recently saw former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly come back down to 175 after he was beaten at cruiserweight. We’ll likely soon see Tony Bellew back at light heavyweight after he finally faces his first quality opponent at cruiserweight. Frampton moving back down to super bantamweight after he too gets whipped would seem to be a forgone conclusion.
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