By William Mackay: WBO super flyweight interim champion Nonito Donaire (24-1, 16 KO’s) wasted time tinkering with fighting out of the southpaw stance on Saturday night against the hard-hitting Hernan Marquez (27-2, 20 KO’s) at the Coliseo Jose Miguel Agrelot, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Finally, when it became clear that Donaire was barely beating Marquez, he reversed course and reverted back to his orthodox, right hand fighting stance in the 5th round to put the 21-year-old Marquez down. From there it was easy sailing for Donaire, as he was able to dominate until stopping Marquez in the 8th with a left uppercut to the head.

It was not an impressive performance from Donaire, even in winning the fight. He wasted too much time using the southpaw stance and should have changed to the fight side once it was clear that he wasn’t able to dominate the shorter Marquez fighting like that. Because of the experiment that Donaire made in using the southpaw stance, he took a lot of punishment in the fight, much more than he probably would have had he fought right-handed.

This wasn’t the kind of performance that will likely send fear into the mind of WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Fernando Montiel, who Donaire would like to fight in the near future. Donaire should have been able to dominate Marquez, who at 5’4″, looked much smaller than Donaire. Things will be different now that Donaire is moving up in weight. He’s had a huge advantage fighting guys a lot smaller than him at flyweight and super flyweight.

But in moving up to bantamweight, we could see Donaire struggling like he did in his fight against Rafael Concepcion in Augst 2009. Concepcion came in overweight for the fight, but still was around the bantamweight class in terms of weight. But Donaire looked lost against a bigger fighter and ended up struggling and taking a lot of punisment in that fight.

Last Saturday night, Donaire filled around in the first four rounds, throwing a lot of jabs and odd looking left hands. It didn’t look good and had no effect in slowing down Marquez, who came forward to land a half a dozen hard shots in each of the first four rounds. Going into the 5th, I had the fight knotted up even. However, once Marquez clobbered Donaire with a hard left hand early in the round, Donaire abandoned his southpaw stance and tour into Marquez, knocking him to the canvas with a dynamite left hand.

In rounds six and seven, Donaire went back to experimenting, looking as if he were working on his ability to throw jabs and keep from getting hit. The crowd hated it and booed the non-action. In the 8th, Donaire appeared to have had enough of Marquez, and put a halt to the fight by nailing him with a hard left uppercut that put Marquez down for the second and final time in the bout. Referee Roberto Ramirez stopped the bout at 2:59 of the 8th.

Donaire needs to forget about experimenting with the southpaw stance in the future, because at bantamweight, he’ll get hurt if he messes around like this.