By Dan Ambrose: WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (26-1, 18 KO’s) will be fighting on October 22nd instead of November 5th, according to news from Ringtv. Donaire, 28, is having his fight moved because the November 5th date would have put him in competition for a fight being shown on Showtime on the same night involving International Boxing Federation (IBF) super middleweight champion Lucian Bute, and Donaire’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank didn’t want to compete directly against Bute and Showtime.

It’s a wise move, because the Bute fight could end up soaking up a lot of attention that would make it hard for Donaire to compete. Bute still doesn’t have an opponent picked out for the November 5th date, but if he finds someone halfway decent, it would have made it very tough on Donaire, who is still yet o make a real name for himself.

His October 22nd fight will be shown on HBO, but the list of possible opponents only has one fighter that boxing fans would likely be interested in seeing Donaire fight and that’s unbeaten Omar Narvaez (35-0-2, 19 KO’s) of Argentina. The other options are considerably less appealing with Silence Mabuza, Christian Esquivel, Sebastian Gauthier, Alexander Munoz and Juan Mercedes.

Donaire has a lot of time to catch up on, as his career has been kind of in kind of frozen state since he defeated Vic Darchinyan in 2007. He fought no one special during the four years after that fight until recently stopping Fernando Montiel to capture that WBC and WBO bantamweight titles in a 2nd round knockout in February.

Donaire will likely be fighting only one more time and then moving up in weight to the super bantamweight division. The move doesn’t really make sense right now, because Donaire’s promoter should at least wait until he faces the winner of Showtime’s bantamweight tournament between Abner Mares and Joseph Agbeko before letting him move up to go after guys like Jorge Arce and Wilfredo Vazquez Jr at super bantamweight.