By Chris Williams: WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (36-3, 23 KOs) will be making his first defense of his WBO title against Zsolt Bedak (25-1, 8 KOs) at the Cebu City Sports Complex in the Philippines.
The fight was previously scheduled for the Araneta Coliseum, Barangay Cubao, Quezon City, in Metro Manila, Philippines. It’s unknown why the fight was moved to a different venue other than perhaps the possibility for a bigger crowd in Cebu City.
Donaire, 33, recently won the vacant WBO super bantamweight title last December with a hard fought 12 round decision win over Cesar Juarez in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Donaire was fortunate that the 24-year-old Juarez wasn’t a bigger puncher than he was because he would have easily lost that fight if he had a little bit more punching power. What the fight did show is that Donaire is getting up there in age, and there is no such thing as an easy fight for him at this point in his career.
Bedak, 32, is an aging fighter too, so Donaire may get a break in this fight from the grueling fights he’s been having. Bedak isn’t a big puncher by any means, and he’s not faced a real quality fighter since his 10th round knockout loss to Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. six years ago in 2010. For some reason, Bedak has been padding his resume for the most part during his 10-year pro career and he’s just been very slow in moving to meaningful fights.
After Bedak’s bad experience when he did try and step up in 2010 against Vazquez Jr., he’s gone back to fighting 2nd and 3rd tier opposition. It’s kept Bedak winning, but it also has made it very slow for him to move up in the rankings with the four sanctioning bodies.
Even after all those wins, Bedak is still ranked only #4 by the World Boxing Organization. That tells you that the sanctioning bodies were not impressed with the level of opposition that Bedak has been fighting. If they were, he would have been moved up quickly in the rankings.
Donaire is in possession of the same WBO title that was stripped from Guillermo Rigondeaux in October of 2015 for failing to defend his title in time. Rigondeaux beat Donaire to win the WBO title in April 2013, and then held onto the title until October 2015. It’s interesting that Donaire was able to get the WBO title back without having to go through Rigondeaux.
However, it’s doubtful that Donaire’s promoters at Top Rank would have bothered putting him in with Rigondeaux if he were still holding the WBO title last December. I’m pretty sure that Donaire’s promoter Bob Arum would have kept Donaire far, far away from fighting Rigondeaux again after the number that he did on Donaire in 2013. The way that Rigondeaux beat Donaire, you would think that there’s no way that Donaire could ever beat the Cuban star.
Donaire is technically a world champion, but he’s not getting the same kind of hype that he did in 2012, when he was voted Fighter of the Year for beating a handful of beatable fighters. Things have changed a lot for Donaire since then. Donaire is now seen by a lot of boxing fans as the fourth or even the fifth best fighter in the 122lb division despite holding down a world title. The fighters that the fans see as the best in the super bantamweight division are Rigondeaux, Carl Frampton, Scott Quigg, Chris Avalos, Luis Rosas and Donaire.
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