By Chris Williams: The long overdue unification bout between WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s) and WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) will be taking place on April 13th at the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, New York.
The Hall has a seating capacity of 6000 seats, and it’s hard to imagine there being more than 2,000, possibly 3000 fans for a fight like this in New York. Arum is going to have to load the card with local fighters or else it’s doing to do poorly.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is expected to be announcing the news about the venue of the fight shortly, according to the Manila Bulletin.
It’s good that the fight is finally taking place, but an odd choice for the venue because it would be a better fight if it took place in California where there are a large amount of Filipino fans to help make it a sellout.
Rigondeaux is the real deal at 122, and if Donaire can beat him, then that really will make a statement for himself as being the best fighter at 122. A win over Rigondeaux means that there’s nothing more for Donaire to do at this weight class because the only other good fighter at this weight, Abner Mares, is moving up to featherweight. Donaire will need to do this if he wants to keep getting important fights.
It’ll be interesting to see if Donaire is courageous enough to take on the top featherweights like Mikey Garcia, Orlando Salido, Daniel Ponce De Leoy, Jayson Velez and Mares. If he moves up and just fights Top Rank fighters, then he might as well just stay at 122 because it’ll be a waste if that’s all Donaire does at featherweight.
I like Rigondeaux in this fight because he’s got the counter punching ability, speed, power, body punching and defense to take advantage of Donaire’s terrible habit of loading up on everything he throws.
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