It's not a mega-fight with Guillermo Rigondeaux or Abner Mares, but nobody can say that Nonito Donaire's upcoming contest with Toshiaki Nishioka (39-4-3, 24 KOs) will not be a legitimate match-up between, arguably, two of the four best junior featherweights in the world.
Confirmed by promoter Bob Arum for October 13 at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, Donaire (29-1, 18 KOs), who is the reigning WBO and IBF 122 lb. titlist, will be taking on former WBC titlist, Nishioka, for a chance at officially stepping into the number one spot in the division.
The F"ilipino Flash" is already a three-division world champ, but a win over the Japanese star on October 13 would take Donaire one step closer to becoming a true, unified champ in the junior featherweight division.
Still, it must be said that Donaire's path to unification hasn't been one likely to endear him to action-hungry fight fans.
Donaire captured the vacant WBO title against Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. in February of this year and then, most recently, took the IBF strap in a July bout with solid, but unspectacular South African Jeffrey Mathebula. Now he faces Nishioka, who is technically the WBC's Champion Emeritus at junior featherweight, but has been unable to fight since beating Rafael Marquez in October of 2011. While nursing injury, Nishioka lost his WBC top spot to Abner Mares, but was never actually beaten for the belt he had been defending since 2009.
Thankfully, talks of a Donaire-Jorge Arce blood-letting fell apart when Arce wanted a larger slice of the revenue pie and, instead, we got the more competitive, but less spectacular fight in Donaire-Nishioka.
It's not the ideal bout fans would like to be seeing, but at least it's a nudge in the right direction from Donaire's usual cannon-fodder and/or paper-champion opponent selection.
Maybe a big win over a quality fighter like Nishioka will convince Team Donaire that he is, indeed, as good as his press clippings have made him out to be and that, yeah, he could very well beat names like Mares and Rigondeaux.
Fans have been told for years now that Donaire is the best in every division from flyweight to junior featherweight; here's hoping that "The Filipino Flash" is finally hungry enough to prove it and that Nishioka is the first step on a legitimate path to a true boxing legacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment