By Chris Williams: WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) and his team at Top Rank made the right decision to fight former WBA super bantamweight champion Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym (48-2, 33 KO’s) on December 15th rather than little known Filipino Drian Francisco (23-1-1, 18 KO’s) at the Toyota Center, in Houston, Texas, USA.

Before Rigondeaux lined up his fight with the 31-year-old Poonsawat, his team was considering using the 29-year-old Francisco. That wouldn’t have been a good fight because Francisco is pretty limited and was recently beaten by Tepparith Kokietgym just last year. I rate Poonsawat as a much better fighter than Kokietgym, and Francisco was easily handled by Kokietgym.

Poonsawat has excellent power and a high pressure style of fighting that should make it interesting for as long as this fight lasts. He’s going to put pressure on Rigondeaux from start to finish and bring out the best in him. This will be the perfect vehicle for Rigondeaux to make a case for himself that he deserves to fight WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire, who will be fighting in the main event against Jorge Arce.

Rigondeaux needs a good opponent with a name because he’s had it really easy with the matchmaking made by Top Rank for him in the last year. It got rediculous recently with Top Rank feeding him bottom ranked contenders Teon Kennedy and Robert Marroquin, which effectively put Rigondeaux in a no-win situation where he got little credit despite easily beating both fighters.

At least when and if Rigondeaux beats Poonsawat, he’ll get respect from boxing fans because Poonsawat is one of the best fighters at 122 right now. I see him as a better fighter than Donaire’s opponent Arce or his past couple of opponents Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. and Jeffrey Mathebula.

Rigondeaux has to get a fight with Donaire quickly because he’s going to be moving up to featherweight in the near future and Rigondeaux may have problems fighting at that weight because he’s a small fighter at only 5’5″.