Jaime McDonnell vs. Rau’shee Warren in the works

By Boxing News - 08/15/2016 - Comments

Image: Jaime McDonnell vs. Rau'shee Warren in the works

By Scott Gilfoid: WBA World bantamweight champion Jaime McDonnell (28-2-1, 13 KOs) will be facing World Boxing Association Super World 118lb champion Rau’shee Warren (14-1, 4 KOs) in his next fight. The 30-year-old McDonnell wants to take this fight before moving up in weight to start campaigning a super bantamweight.

It’s a move long overdue for the 5’10” McDonnell, because he’s way too big for the bantamweight division and it’s going to be horrible experience for him to drop weight to make the 118lb limit to fight against the much smaller fighters. Warren, 5’4 ½”, is a typical bantamweight in terms of height, and he’ll be giving up 5 ½” inches in height to McDonnell.

The winner of the McDonnell vs. Warren fight will be the top dog for the WBA’s bantamweight title. If won’t last long for McDonnell if he wins, which I expect he will. Warren is nothing special. He’s a decent fighter, but he’s going to have problems with the 10 inch reach advantage of McDonnell. That’s almost a foot reach advantage that McDonnell will have in the fight. Heck, that’s not even a fair fight. Warren needs some kind of handicap to make it a competitive fight. I mean, if Warren was a knockout artist or even a guy with respectable power, then I would say that McDonnell’s height and reach advantage wouldn’t be a big deal.

Unfortunately for Warren, he can’t punch at all and he’s mostly just a pot shot fighter in the Floyd Mayweather Jr. mold. Warren has got good speed and excellent boxing skills, but he’s definitely a Mayweather-like fighter, and that’s simply not the right type of fighter to beat a guy as huge as McDonnell.

“The Warren fight is very close so fingers crossed,” said trainer Dave Coldwell to skysports.com. “We’re just sorting things out. Hopefully that’s the fight that’s next, it’s the fight that Jamie wants. Jamie wants to fight the best out there; he wants fights that will get him respect.”

McDonnell could be facing former WBA World super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg in the near future once he moves up in weight to the 122lb division. I don’t care how much of a height and reach advantage McDonnell has over Quigg, that’s not good match-up for him. Quigg is way too powerful for McDonnell, and he’s not that much shorter at 5’8”. Three inches is nothing when you punch like Quigg. I see that fight as a knockout loss for McDonnell. It’ll give him a good payday though.