By Chris Williams: With WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire making every excuse under the sun for not stepping it up a couple levels and facing WBA super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (10-0, 8 KO’s), the WBC 122 pound champion Abner Mares says he thinks Donaire is afraid to fight Rigondeaux and that he’ll fight him if Donaire is afraid to.

Mares told thaboxingvoice.com “He’s [Donaire] pretty much saying he doesn’t want to fight Guillermo Rigondeaux because he feels Guillermo Rigondeaux will make him look bad I’m guessing. At the end of the way y9u have to face the champions that are there…I’m willing to fight Guillermo Rigondeux even if he’s a really technical fighter.”

Mares already fought Rigondeaux in the Pan American Games when they were both amateurs and Rigondeaux beat him. However, Mares doesn’t care that he was beaten once by Rigondeaux; he still wants to fight him again now that the two fighters are in the pro ranks. The thing that may ultimately get in the way of Mares taking on Rigondeaux is that the two fighters fight for different promotional companies. Mares fights for Golden Boy Promotions, whereas Donaire fights for Top Rank.

Mares says he has no problem asking Golden Boy to put a fight together between him and Rigondeaux, and I’m pretty sure that Bob Arum, Rigondeaux’s promoter, wouldn’t say not to a fight between Rigondeaux and Mares because it’s a fight that would favor Rigondeaux.

It would be a great way for Arum to increase the value of his fighter without him having Rigondeaux expose Donaire before he’s made big money for his company. You put Donaire in with Rigondeaux, and we’d likely see Donaire getting whipped badly. Arum would then be back to square one with Donaire with him making smaller money and likely not even being televised on HBO anymore.