By Chris Williams: WBA Super World featherweight champion Nonito Donaire (33-2, 21 KOs) will be defending his title against WBA World featherweight champion Nicholas Walters (24-0, 20 KOs) in the co-feature bout on the Gennady Golovkin vs. Marco Antonio Rubio card on October 18th in a fight televised by HBO Championship Boxing from the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Donaire-Walters is arguably the best co-feature bout on a major fight card since the Lucas Matthysse vs. Danny Garcia fight last year in September when that fight was the co-feature on the Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight card.
Steve Kim said on his twitter “Nonito Donaire vs Nicholas Walters as the GGG-Rubio co-feature according to @TomLoeffler1 . Whoa, this is real!!! #boxing. Finally, Donaire will fight in front of a crowd at the StubHub Center that will be large and won’t be leaving their seats.”
The Donaire-Walters fight is kind of the moment of truth for Donaire, who hasn’t looked really good in a fight since his 3rd round stoppage win over Jorge Arce in December 2012.
Donaire has fought three times since then, losing to Guillermo Rigondeaux last year, and then beating Vic Darchinyan and Simpiwe Vetyeka. Donaire took a lot of nasty punishment in his fight against Darchinyan, and ended up with a cracked cheekbone.
In Donaire’s last fight, he defeated WBA Super World featherweight champion Simpiwe Vetyeka by a 5 round technical decision. That was a really controversial fight because Donaire was basically losing the fight for the first 3 rounds, but then he got a flash knockdown in the 4th. The fight went to the scorecards in the 5th due to Donaire complaining he couldn’t see out of his cut eye.
Donaire had suffered a cut in the 1st round. He was able to fight with the same cut for four rounds, and then immediately he had a good round where he scored a flash knockdown, he complained he couldn’t see. The fight had gone on long enough for it to be an official bout at that point.
A lot of boxing fans weren’t happy with the way that Donaire was able to win a world title by going on 5 rounds with Vetyeka, and then fight being halted right after a good round for Donaire. After the fight, Donaire said he was going to give Vetyka a rematch because he didn’t want to win a world title that way. As you see, Donaire opted not to give Vetyeka a rematch.
Walters easily took care of Darchinyan in beating him by a 5th round TKO last May. Walters was just too big for Darchinyan to deal with.
I believe that Walters is going to give Donaire a lot of problems in this fight with his power and his size. He’s a guy that fights tall with power in each hand. He’s not easy to hit, and he makes his opponents pay when they attempt to land something. As bad as Donaire has looked in his last several fights, I could see him losing to Walters.
Comments are closed.