By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is reportedly going to be announcing the December 15th fight between WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (30-1, 19 KO’s) and 33-year-old Jorge Arce (61-6-2, 46 KO’s) next Tuesday, according to RingTV.

Arum said to RingTV “The fight [Donaire-Arce] is going to happen and it’s going to happen on December 15th. We’ll have an announcement on Tuesday.”

For boxing fans interested in seeing this mismatch this news should make them feel pretty happy. Arce, 5’4″, doesn’t have a chance to win this fight aside from a possible injury to Donaire. But he’s not going to beat him in an actual fight because Arce is too old, too small, too slow and too weak to come out on top against Donaire. That doesn’t mean Donaire can be beaten, because he certainly can, but Arum isn’t matching him up against the guys that could beat him in Anselmo Moreno, Guillermo Rigondeaux and Abner Mares.

If the Arce-Donare fight had taken place five years ago before Arce was completely dominated by Cristian Mijares and Vic Darchinyan, then it wouldn’t be a bad fight, but the fact of the matter is Arce has been beaten soundly by both of those guys. It’s not interesting to see Arce fighting Donaire when Donaire already easily beat Darchinyan.

This fight just looks like another money grab. It’s safe fight for Donaire because Arce is older now and he’s already been beaten by lesser fighters than Donaire. In fact, Arce was getting beaten in a recent fight against a little known fighter by the name of Jesus M Rojas last June when Arce couldn’t fight anymore suddenly in the 2nd round, claiming he was injured. It reminded me of the fight between Evander Holyfield and Sherman Williams when Holyfield said he couldn’t see from a cut when things were going badly for him. Arce is out of his class against Donaire and it’s just a bad mismatch.

You got to figure that HBO will be televising the Arce-Donaire fight on December 15th, and all I can say about that is I hope Top Rank either makes this an undercard fight or loads up the card with quality fights to help make up for this mismatch because this isn’t going to be good television. It’ll be like the Manny Pacquiao vs. Shane Mosley pay per view mismatch that was hard on the eyes and shouldn’t eve been made in the first place given how shot Mosley was when the fight was put together.

Donaire is coming off of a mismatch against 36-year-old Toshiki Nishioka earlier this month. Nishioka hadn’t fought in a year and looked shot to pieces. Donaire claimed that Nishioka was the best fighter in the super bantamweight division before the bout, but it just looked like another soft fight for him. Nishioka sure didn’t look like the best from what I could see. He looked more like the worst in the division. And now Arum setting up Donaire against little Arce for another mismatch. That’s about as interesting as seeing Jeffrey Matthebula and Nishioka trotted back out again to fight Donaire.