By Chris Williams: Trainer Nonito Donaire Sr is raving about how good his son WBA Super World featherweight champion Nonito Donaire (33-2, 21 KOs) has been looking during training camp recently in his 3rd week of camp.
Donaire is getting ready for his title defense against unbeaten Nicholas Walters (24-0, 20 KOs) next month on October 18th at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. Donaire’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank has to be pretty confident that he’ll beat Walters otherwise he likely wouldn’t have made the fight.
Walters doesn’t have a big name, and it’s highly unlikely that Arum would feed Donaire to someone who doesn’t have huge fan support unless that were someone that he was confident that Donaire could beat.
Donaire Sr. said to the Manilastandardtoday.com that Donaire “has got his speed and power back and looked good in his third week of training. We need to watch for his (Walters) power and make sure that Nonito doesn’t get hit with his power shots.”
It’s doubtful that Donaire has got his diminishing hand speed and foot speed back. I don’t think those physical assets are ever going to return now that Donaire is 31 and beginning to slow. His power is obviously still there for him, but without his blinding speed and with him fighting at featherweight, his power isn’t as pronounced as it was when Donaire was fighting at bantamweight and super bantamweight.
It’s going to be pretty much impossible for Donaire to avoid getting hit with Walters’ power shots in this fight unless Donaire gets him out of there early in the fight before Walters has a chance to land his big power shots. I’m not sure that Donaire has the kind of power to score an early knockout at featherweight, because he did not look good in his last fight against Simpiwe Vetyeka last May.
Donaire won the fight by a controversial 5th round technical decision after suffering a cut in the 1st and then saying he couldn’t see out of his eye 4 rounds later. But Vetyeka was fighting well and basically on even terms with Donaire in the fight. Neither guy looked good. I had the feeling that Donaire would have lost the fight if he didn’t complain about not being able to see in the 5th all of a sudden.
Walters has the power to give Donaire a huge amount of problems in this fight, and we could see Donaire take a worse beating than the one he took in his loss to Guillermo Rigondeauz last year in April.
Rigondeaux beat Donaire by a 12 round decision in New York. Donaire spoke about wanting to avenge the loss but instead he’s fought Vik Darchinyan and Vetyeka in his last two fights. Donaire also said that he was going to give Vetyeka a rematch, but it looks like Donaire changed his mind about that unless he plans on fighting him at a later date.
Walters made easy work of Darchinyan in his last fight in stopping him in the 5th round last May.
At this point in Donaire’s career you can’t assume he’s going to beat any top five contender. He doesn’t move as well as he used to, his speed isn’t as good, and he doesn’t seem to handle taking punishment too well. He’s good at dishing it out, but he doesn’t look nearly as good handling taking punishment. This means that if the Donaire-Walters fight last beyond 6 rounds, and we don’t see another technical decision if Donaire suffers another cut, then Donaire could have some major problems against Walters.
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