Donaire vs. Rigondeaux

By Chris Williams: WBA super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) will be making his best payday of his career tonight when he gets a guaranteed $750,000 for his unification fight against WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s) at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, New York. For his part, Donaire will make $1.32 million

For Rigondeaux, he can guarantee himself a big payday if he defeats Donaire because there’s no way that Donaire’s promoter Bob Arum will let Donaire move on from this fight if he gets beaten. He almost has to put him back in with Rigondeaux because Donaire will be a tainted fighter if and when Rigondeaux knocks him out or decisions him tonight in their fight on HBO.

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By Chris Williams: WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas both see WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) defeating WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s) tonight in their fight at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, New York.

Golovkin likes Rigondeaux’s pressure and aggressiveness and he thinks that’ll be the telling factor in the fight, whereas Atlas sees Rigondeaux’s counter punching and body punching as being the key to the fight.

Atlas thinks Donaire can win if he stays disciplined and uses his 3 inch height and reach advantage over Rigondeaux, but he doesn’t think he’s going to do that. Atlas believes that Donaire will want to engage and turn the fight into a war and that in turn will give Rigondeaux all the chances he needs to win the fight.

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By Chris Williams: WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s), one of the bigger fighters in the 122 lb. division, chose to mock the normal sized for the weight class Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) at yesterdays’ weigh-in when the two fighters stood for the traditional stare down. The 5’7” Donaire crouched down several inches to stand eye to eye with the 5’4” Rigondeaux so that he could wink at him and smile if making fun of his lack of height in comparison to him.

Rigondeaux and Donaire will be facing each other tonight at the Radio City Music Hall, in New York, New York, USA in a fight that will be televised on HBO.

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By Chris Williams: Trainer Nacho Beristain believes that WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) will defeat WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s) in a minor upset at the Radio City Music Hall, in New York, New York, USA.

Beristain thinks the combination of Rigondeaux’s incredible boxing skills and power will surprise the Filipino and give him major problems.

Beristain said to ESPN Latino “I think Rigondeaux will win. He’s a tough fighter, experienced, he has a great sense of distance. Everybody is talking about Nonito’s punch but I think if the other guy [Rigondeaux] applies himself, he’ll eat him alive.”

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By Thomas Cowan: On Saturday night, WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire faces WBA champion Guillermo Rigondeaux in New York City in the biggest fight of 2013 so far. Donaire is the bigger of the two and the Filipino hasn’t lost a fight for 12 years but nobody is ruling out slight underdog Rigondeaux, who won two Olympic gold medals with Cuba and is unbeaten his 11 professional fights.

With Abner Mares moving up to featherweight to face Daniel Ponce de Leon, the winner of this Saturday’s unification clash will be the king of the 122lbs division because the other fighters at super bantamweight aren’t in the same league as Donaire and Rigondeaux. It’s good to see the lower divisions getting this much attention because normally anything below 140lbs does not get much publicity. There have been some great fighters at flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight and lightweight over the years but if you ask any boxing fan to compile a list of the 50 greatest fighters of all time, 45 of those fighters will probably fight at welterweight or higher.

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By Peter Wells: – (twitter- @boxingpeter): So, after a slow and somewhat uninspiring start to boxing in 2013, the big fights are now raining in on us. Fight postponements didn’t help either but now fans are being fed a whole load of tasty match ups in the coming weeks. March had some sensational, fight of the year candidates in Bradley-Provodnikov and Rios-Alvarado 2, and now April and May are ready to deliver their own batch of entertainment.

To give you a quick preview of what follows this weekends Super Bantamweight clash, on 20th April Austin Trout and Saul Alvarez clash in a fight between Light Middleweights top unbeaten fighters.

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By Chris Williams: WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s) explained after his final press conference with WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) why he decided to lock eyes on him and not look away for the longest of times.

Donaire said he was trying to dominate Rigondeaux. In other words, to intimidate him so that Donaire could get an edge, any kind of edge before their fight this Saturday night at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, New York.

Donaire said on his twitter: “I wasn’t going to look away. I wanted to show the dominance.”

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By Chris Williams: Respected trainer Freddie Roach sees this Saturday’s unification showdown between WBA World junior middleweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (11-0, 8 KO’s) and WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s) as a 50-50 that could go either way.

Roach, unlike a lot of people that have drank the Donaire kool-aid, sees this as a fight that truly is a tossup fight. Roach knows how good Rigondeaux is because he briefly trained him and saw how good he was during that time. Roach has seen a lot of Donaire and he knows enough that he doesn’t have an advantage in this fight except for perhaps his huge size for the weight class.

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