By Jim Dower: WBC featherweight champion Jhonny Gonzalez (57-8, 48 KOs) is targeting WBA Super World featherweight champion Nonito Donaire (33-2, 21 KOs) for a fight in the near future if Donaire can get past his match against WBA champ Nicholas Walters (24-0, 20 KOs) on October 18th on the Gennady Golovkin vs. Marco Antonio Rubio fight card on HBO Championship Boxing at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
“I would like to fight Donaire,” Gonzalez said as quoted by Thaboxingvoice.com.
Gonzalez would be a tough fight for Donaire because he has size, speed, power and good boxing skills.
Donaire has his hands full against Walters, and there’s really no way of telling right now whether he’ll be able to get through that fight with a victory or in one piece. If Donaire does win the fight then it’s more than likely that his promoter Bob Arum will keep him fighting in house guys like Evgeny Gradovich rather than putting him at risk against a non-Top Rank fighter like Gonzalez.
Donaire still hasn’t even proven that he belongs in the featherweight division, because his first fight in the weight class was against a pumped up super bantamweight in 38-year-old Vic Darchinyan, and Donaire did not look good in that fight. Before that, Donaire was beaten by Guillermo Rigondeaux by a 12 round unanimous decision last year in April.
Last May, Donaire defeated Simpiwe Vetyeka by a 5th round technical decision to win the WBA Super World featherweight title. However, that fight didn’t go the full distance due to a cut that Donaire received. Had the fight gone the full distance it’s anyone’s guess who would have won. Donaire wasn’t dominating Vetyeka. Indeed, it was a pretty even fight at the time of the stoppage, and there’s a possibility that it could very well have gone Vetyeka’s way had the fight not been stopped.
It’s not likely that Arum will let Gonzalez fight Donaire because he’s probably going to keep mixing and matching Donaire against his own Top Rank fighters until he’s exhausted the matches as well as rematches.
We could eventually see Donaire fight WBO featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko in a unification match, and it’s doubtful Arum will want to jeopardize that fight by putting Donaire in against a fighter like Jhonny Gonzalez where the possibilities of Donaire losing the fight would be significant.
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