By Dave Lahr: Nonito Donaire (25-1, 17 KO’s) is about to meet the biggest puncher he’s ever seen when he takes on WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Fernando Montiel (44-2-2, 34 KO’s) on February 19th at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Up until now, Donaire has just been playing around in the sandbox with much weaker punchers and has been able to have his way most of the time. Montiel is a whole different ballgame. Whatever he hits, he breaks and Donaire is going to be in serious trouble in this fight.

Donaire is talking about wanting to get a quick knockout. I see this as a trick to try and throw Montiel off, because we pretty much saw what Donaire does when he faces a hard puncher in his fight with Rafael Concepcion in 2009, when Donaire ran around the ring all night long to keep from getting hit by Concepcion. It didn’t work very well, because Concepcion kept charging forward and blasting Donaire with power shots. It was an ugly fight due to the running Donaire did, and no way should that fight have been scored as a win for Donaire.

WBC president Jose Sulaiman knows how powerful Montiel is, and had this to say in and article at sportlinglife.com: “Montiel is a destroyer. His punches can annihilate anyone. It will be a great fight form the first round to the end.”

Yes, it will be a great fight from the first round until the bitter end. I see it going badly for Donaire. He’ll start off well but go to pieces once Montiel starts to find his range and land his shots. Once he connects with a halfway decent shot, I see Donaire flopping to the canvas and rolling around to try and find his legs. Once he gets up, Montiel is going to really plant a nice right hand to the jaw of Donaire and knock him clean out. The HBO hype fighter will be then dust.