By Chris Williams: Despite having won the vacant WBO super bantamweight title against former WBO champion Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. last February, WBO champion Nonito Donaire (28-1, 18 KO’s) will be facing a super flyweight in Cristian Mijares (44-6-2, 20 KO’s) on July 14th at the Cowboys Stadium, Arlington, Texas. The fight doesn’t make sense.
Donaire moved up in weight to super bantamweight, and looked terrible in winning the WBO title off of a guy that had been recently knocked out by Jorge Arce, and instead of fighting a super bantamweight contender like he should be, Donaire is facing a light hitting super flyweight.
The whole fight doesn’t make sense. Donaire said he wanted to take on the big names and get the exciting fights, but he turns down a bout against Guillermo Rigondeaux to fight Vazquez Jr. and now he’s fighting Mijares, who was beaten by Vic Darchinyan soundly in a 9th round stoppage in 2008.
Donaire should be taking on a quality fighter from the super bantamweight division instead of combing the lighter weights for victims. We saw Donaire beating Omar Narvaez not long ago. Narvaez fights at super flyweight.
As the WBO super bantamweight champion, Donaire SHOULD be picking from one of the top 15 contenders that the WBO has ranked such as:
1. Jonathan Oquendo
4. Sod Looknongyangtoy
5. Jonathan Romero
6. Jesse Albacin
8. Rafael Marquez
9. Jayson Velez
10. Alejandro Lopez
11. Jose Nieves
12. Chris Avalos
13. Alfred Tetteh
14. Macbute Sinyabi
15. Jhonathan Arenas
I’d rather see Donaire face one of those guys than seeing him fight super flyweight Mijares. That’s pretty sad if you ask me. Donaire has facing smaller guys for quite some time now, and after moving up in weight to the super bantamweight division, he faces one guy his own size in Vazquez Jr., gets badly marked up, doesn’t impress, and is now facing a guy from a division below him. Is that sad or what. Donaire was supposed to be a risk taker, a new kind of fighter, but he sure looks like a cherry picker to me.
Mijares doesn’t stand a chance in this fight. Although Mijares has won his last fight fights since 2009, he hasn’t faced anyone any good during that time. The last time Mijares faced a semi-good fighter, he got beaten by Nehomar Cermeno in back to back fights. And before that, he was beaten up and stopped by Darchinyan in November 2008. I have no problems Mijares fighting for a title, but I’d like to see that happen in the division he’s ranked in. He’s not ranked in the super bantamweight division, so he doesn’t belong out there with Donaire.
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