By Chris Williams: In their haste to find the next Manny Pacquiao, many boxing fans have already crowned WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (26-1, 18 KO’s) as the next Pacquiao based on a few wins during his career against Fernando Montiel, Vic Darchinyan and Wladimir Sidorenko. Some boxing fans even think that the slender 5’7″ Donaire will be good enough to capture eight or more world titles before he retires in the future. I think that’s pretty laughable because the 28-year-old Donaire is way behind the pace that Pacquiao set while capturing titles.

At the same time, Donaire doesn’t have the same kind of stocky build that Pacquiao has, and that’s going to be a limiting factor for Donaire. He’s great little fighter at flyweight, super flyweight and bantamweight, but to ask that Donaire be able to win titles all the way to welterweight and above, it’s probably not realistic that’s going to happen. Even if Donarie signed on strength trainer Alex Ariza to help him put on weight to move up, he just doesn’t seem as sturdy or as fast as Pacquiao was he was fighting at the lower weights. Donaire is just too skinny and frail to move up much further than where he is right now in weight.

If Donaire goes beyond the super bantamweight division, you can bet that the added weight will make him as slow as a slug, and ultimately beatable. You take away Donaire’s hand speed, and he’s just another fighter with an unbalanced offensive arsenal. He doesn’t have a great right hand, and once his speed is gone, all fighters will have to do is block his left and the fight will be one.

It would be great if Donaire were able to move up in weight and pick up titles all the way to the welterweight or junior middleweight division. However, for that to happen, Donaire would have to move up a lot faster than he’s doing now. You put a guy out there with bigger fighters like light welterweights, welterweights and junior middleweights, he’d better have more than one weapon. Unfortunately, Donaire only has a left hand. That won’t allow him to accomplish the same things that Pacquiao has done, even if he’s matched against paper champions with each division title he goes after.