By Dan Ambrose: Robert Garcia, the trainer for IBF/WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (30-1, 19 KO’s), doesn’t believe that WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) has earned his way to a unification bout against Donaire due to the level of competition he’s been facing thus far.

Garcia said to Chris Robinson at CRHarmony “I have no doubt that Nonito Donaire can beat Rigondeaux; it could even be an easy fight. But he [Rigondeaux] can’t win the spot by beating someone like [Robert] Marroquin. He’s got to win the spot by beating names like Nonito has been doing.”

As you can see, Rigondeaux is in a bind here. He can’t get the fight with Donaire because he hasn’t fought the same guys that Donaire has fought, but a big part of the problem is that he’s not able to get the kinds of fighters to agree to fight him because he’s not well known like Donaire and as popular as him. Rigondeaux’s chances of getting guys like Fernando Montiel, Toshiaki Nishioka, Wilfredo Vazquez Jr, Jeffrey Mathebula and Omar Narvaez to agree to fight him are pretty much nonexistent because these guys would likely want a big payday to fight and that’s not going to happen against the likes of Rigondeaux, because he’s not at Donaire’s level in terms of drawing huge amounts of money.

Those guys aren’t going to volunteer to fight Rigondeaux for chicken feed, so it’s next to impossible for Rigondeaux to get the same guys to agree to fight him unless Rigondeaux’x promoter Bob Arum puts some extra Top Rank’s money into it to get one of these names to fight Rigondeaux. I don’t see that happening. As such, we’re probably going to have to be content to see Rigondeaux fighting mainly his mandatory challengers, few of which are well known enough to get Rigondeaux a fight against Donaire. It’s likely that this will continue to be used as an excuse for Donaire not to fight Rigondeaux until Donaire leaves the division and moves up in weight to featherweight.

What’s odd is that Donaire was willing to fight Mathebula and Narvaez, and those guys aren’t big names in the U.S.