By Chris Williams: Featherweights Yuriorkis Gamboa and Juan Manuel Lopez have nothing to worry about in facing WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (27-1, 18 KO’s) some day when Donaire eventually moves up in weight to the featherweight division, if his promoter will let him that is. Donaire looked completely slow, lethargic and sloppy in defeating his much, much smaller challenger Omar Narvaez (35-1-2, 19 KO’s) by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the MSG – WaMu Theater, New York, New York.

The final judge’s scores were 120-108, 120-108 and 120-108, all for Donaire. It was really bad boxing with Donaire missing around 95% of the time and Narvaez mostly covering up and doing a fair imitation of Joshua Clottey in his one-sided loss to Manny Pacquiao. I don’t agree with the scores though.

I had Narvaez winning at least four of the early rounds of the fight with his cleaner shots. But in the 2nd half of the fight, Narvaez stopped thinking offense and just spent the entire holding his high guard and doing an incredible job of blocking almost everything Donaire threw.

Narvaez showed amazing defensive ability, but in the end he couldn’t overcome his lack of height. He was four inches shorter than Donaire and he looked at least 15 pounds lighter. At the weigh-in on Friday, Nonito was drawn and looked weight drained. But he clearly put on an awful lot of weight after re-hydrating and looked bloated and fat for him.

That’s a sign that Donaire needs to move up in weight at least to super bantamweight if his promoter Bob Arum doesn’t want to put Donaire in with the featherweights like Gamboa and Lopez. Right now, I think that would be a really bad idea.

I don’t know when Donaire will ever be good enough to beat those guys because they’re a lot stronger than Donaire and don’t need to load up on their shots to hurt him. Lopez is a little taller than Donaire and Gamboa is much stronger and faster. My guess is Arum will keep Donaire down below featherweight as long as possible before eventually putting him in against one of those guys. Donaire will be trounced when that time comes.

Donaire was a much better puncher when he was fighting at super flyweight. He seems to be not carrying his power up with him in moving up in weight.

In other action on the card:

Mikael Zewski TKO 1 Keuntray Henson
Cletus Seldin TKO 2 Jose Segura Torres
Seanie Monaghan TKO 5 Anthony Pietantonio
Jonathan Gonzalez UD 6 Jose Rivera