Arum: Darchinyan still in mix for Donaire’s April 13th fight

By Boxing News - 01/29/2013 - Comments

darchinyan4534By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says 37-year-old Vic Darchinyan (38-5-1, 27 KO’s) is still a possibility for his fighter WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire’s next fight on April 13th on HBO. Arum said to 8countnews.com that he and Donaire will decide in the next day or two whether to go with Darchinyan, whose career is really sagging in a major way, or the unbeaten and clearly more dangerous WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s).

Donaire says he’s still very much interested in the Darchinyan fight for some reason. Why he’s still interested is really the big question because Darchinyan has lost two out of his last three fights.

Darchinyan was totally dominated by both Anselmo Moreno and Shinsuke Yamanaka recently. The only thing I can think about Donaire picking Darchinyan is that he’d be keeping with his recent habit of facing faded older fighters instead of guys that are fighting well.

Look at Donaire’s last two opponents: Jorge Arce and Toshiaki Nishioka. Both guys were older fighters on the downside of their careers when Donaire decided to fight them. If Donaire fights Darchinyan in April then he’d be keeping up with his habit of taking the older guy.

HBO might have a say so over who Donaire fights because whoever Donaire selects between Rigondeaux and Darchinyan, HBO will have to bless the decision because they’ll be the one that will be paying them. I would like to think that HBO will say no to Darchinyan if he’s the one that’s selected but I doubt it. Darchinyan is better known than Rigondeaux by casual boxing fans, and even though Darchinyan is on the downside of his career and has already been badly knocked out by Donaire back in 2007 in a 5th round KO loss, I can see HBO still saying yes to a Donaire-Darchinyan fight.

As for the Donaire vs. Abner Mares fight, Bob Arum reportedly rejected the idea of that fight taking place for a number of reasons, one of which being that Mares’ promoters at Golden Boy want the fight to be staged in June, and Arum said they have a commitment with HBO to fight on April 13th, according to RingTV. Arum is still interested in trying to put together a fight between Mares and Donaire later on this year, but it’s going to be after the April 13th fight.



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