By Chris Williams: WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (36-3, 23 KOs) will be making his first defense of his WBO title on April 23 against #4 WBO Zsolt Bedak (25-1, 8 kOs) at the Araneta Coliseum, Barangay Cubao, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. Donaire recently won his WBO 122lb.
title with a tougher than expected 12 round war with young Mexican fighter Cesar Juarez last December. Donaire was fortunate to win that fight because he took more punishment than he has since his stoppage loss to Nicholas Walters in 2014
. Juarez made the 32-year-old Donaire look like an old man at times in that fight, especially with the way he took over the fight in the last six rounds. Donaire was very fortunate that Juarez didn’t have a lot of punching power, because he surely would have lost that fight if that had been the case.
Donaire and his promoters at Top Rank are taking it easy with this first defense in picking out an easy mark in 32-year-old Bedak. This is going to be an easy fight for Donaire, as Bedak has no punching power and he’s been padding his record for the most part with weak opposition since he turned pro ten years ago in 2006. Bedak has fought exactly one good opponent during his career in Wilfredo Vazquez Jr., and he was knocked out by him in the 10th round in 2010. Since then, Bedak has gone back to fighting weak opposition again and has won his last 10 fights.
“It’s a great opportunity for Nonito to defend his world championship in his homeland against a world-ranked and extremely capable opponent,” said Carl Moretti of Top Rank to ESPN.com.
You can translate “capable” as meaning easy mark, because that’s what Bedak is. He’s not a major player in the super bantamweight division. He might have been a major guy if he had started fighting top fighters shortly after he turned pro a decade ago, but he’s wasted all those years in fighting weak opponents.
Bedak is now 32, and he’s definitely been passed by with the younger fighters like Carl Frampton, Scott Quigg, Jessie Magdaleno and Moises Flores.
Donaire’s career has kind of seen a major change since his one-sided loss to Cuban Guillermo Rigondeaux in 2013. Before that loss, Donaire’s fights were largely staged in the U.S. Since then, however, Donaire has seen four out of his last six fights staged outside of the United States. His fight against Bedak will be his fourth fight outside of the U.S in his last seven fights.
That could be interpreted as Donaire losing a lot of boxing fans since he was exposed by Rigondeaux. That loss definitely hit Donaire hard, as his fights were televised on HBO before that and he was seen as a star in the making. After losing to Rigondeaux, Donaire made the mistake of moving up to featherweight, where he was stopped by Nicholas Walters in six rounds in 2014, and almost beaten by super bantamweight Vic Darchiniyan in 2013.
Donaire also had a controversial 5th round technical decision win over Simpiwe Vetyeka to win the WBA Super World featherweight title in May 2014. It was a very controversial way for Donaire to beat a champion because Donaire claimed he couldn’t see out of a cut over his right eye, but the cut had been there since round one and it didn’t look like it had gotten any worse.
It was an even fight until Donaire scored a flash knockdown in the 4th round. Shortly after that, he said he could no longer see out of his cut eye. It looked to some boxing fans that Donaire wanted to take the fight to the scorecards after he got the knockdown because it gave him an advantage. Had the fight gone the distance, Donaire might have been beaten. At the time, Donaire said he was going to give Vetyeka a rematch because he didn’t like winning a world title in that manner. However, Donaire never gave him a rematch, and instead, he moved on.
If Top Rank wants to keep Donaire as the WBO 122lb champion, then they’re going to need to think seriously about matching him very carefully by keeping him away from the dangerous opponents in the division, because I don’t think Donaire can beat the top caliber fighters. I see Donaire as a paper champion, and I think he’ll lose Rigondeaux again.
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