By Chris Williams: 32-year-old Nonito Donaire (34-3, 22 KOs) won’t have HBO televise his next fight against little known Anthony Settoul (20-3, 8 KOs) on July 18th from the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, in Macao, Macao S.A.R., China. The fight will be televised by UniMás in the United States.
Donaire is ranked 3 WBO, 11 IBF. He’s hoping to get a title shot against WBA super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg. I guess a rematch with WBA/WBO 122lb champion Guillermo Rigondeaux isn’t in the cards for Donaire.
If Donaire can win the WBA title off of Quigg, you have to guess that Donaire will sit on the title and defend it over and over against the largely little known contenders the WBA has ranked in their top 15.
With Donaire’s huge size for the 122lb division, he might be able to dominate like he did before as long as he doesn’t fight certain guys like Leo Santa Cruz, Carl Frampton and Rigondeaux.
It’s unclear if HBO passed up on this fight, but it wouldn’t be surprising because it’s not a competitive match-up. Donaire hasn’t fought a good opponent since he was stopped in the 6th round by Nicholas Walters last year in October.
Donaire won his last fight against someone named William Prado last March in stopping him in the 2nd round. It looks like Top Rank is taking it really careful with Donaire since his loss to Walters. Donaire is now once again fighting at super bantamweight and is hoping he can find the same success in that weight class as he did previously when he held the IBF and WBO titles.
Donaire was beaten Guillermo Rigondeaux in 2013, a year after Donaire was voted the ‘Fighter of the Year’ for beating past his prime Jorge Arce, Toshiaki Nishioka, Jeffery Mathebula and Wilfredo Vasquez Jr. The victories for Donaire were largely empty ones over weak opposition.
The guys that voted for Donaire didn’t seem to have much of an idea about the quality of the fighters that he’d beaten, because if they did they probably wouldn’t have voted for him. They would have waited like I did for Donaire to fight Rigondeaux before they formed an opinion about him. The thing is Rigondeaux had been trying to get a fight against Donaire since 2012, and had no luck.
Instead of Donaire fighting Rigondeaux, we saw him fighting guys that over-the-hill like Arce and Nishioka. Both of those guys were done at this point in their careers, and it didn’t make sense for Donaire to be fighting them instead of Rigondeaux.
Donaire’s career has really taken a huge nosedive with his embarrassing losses to Rigondeaux and Walters. What makes things so bad for Donaire is that he didn’t even attempt to avenge either of his defeats. I don’t know if that’s Donaire’s call or his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank. Either way, it’s not helped Donaire’s career because he couldn’t go back and prove to the fans that those losses were just fluke things. But what also looks bad is Donaire going backward with his career in moving back down to 122 to campaign in a weight class that he previously said he couldn’t make anymore. Donaire also looked really bad with the way he won the WBA featherweight title against Simpiwe Vetyeka in May of last year. That was a fight in which Donaire was cut over his left eye in the 1st round. He fought with the cut until the fight was stopped after the 5th round after he had scored a flash knockdown of Vetyeka. Before the knockdown, the fight was basically even. After the fight was over, Donaire said he would give Vetyeka a rematch because he didn’t like the idea of winning a world title after only five rounds. But instead of giving Vetyeka a rematch, Donaire moved on with his career.
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