Some boxing aficionados were suspicious of Nonito Donaire’s talents during the promotion of the young Filipino’s fight with Mexico’s WBC/WBO bantamweight champion Fernando Montiel. Most of these aficionados’ wrongheaded ways were righted by the Donaire left that took Montiel’s mind right away. Donaire claimed those suspicions with grace and violence.
But a few stubborn members of the aficionado ranks remain. There is but one way for Donaire to undo these men’s obduracy. And lucky for us, that way is the one Donaire says he wants to go. More about that in a bit.
Saturday night at Mandalay Bay, Donaire did no wrong – not one wrong step, slip or punch – as he razed Montiel in a fight that was supposed to be super, wasn’t, but did end in superlative fashion. Donaire stopped Montiel ultimately with a flurry of afterthought punches at 2:25 of round 2. But by then he’d changed the trajectory of his career with a left hook that surprised Montiel, and everyone else.
Even serious boxing fans were forgiven their disbelief at Saturday’s spectacle. For most of us, after all, Nonito Donaire was the guy who stretched Vic Darchinyan on Showtime 40 months ago, left promoter Gary Shaw and disappeared into promoter Top Rank’s farm system, making reportedly excellent if alliterative progress on Pinoy Power pay-per-view programs.
By 2010 Donaire was lost to the public. While specialists knew of his technical acumen, most everyone else assumed Top Rank already had its Filipino superstar in Manny Pacquiao – and one was enough. Rabid as boxing’s supporters in the Philippines were, there was only so much money to be squeezed from the world’s number 46 economy.
How well Top Rank has handled Donaire’s career is debatable. How well Top Rank has developed Donaire as a prizefighter, though, is not.
Since his one-punch flattening of Darchinyan in 2007, Donaire had fought seven times against very good if not well-known opponents, men with a cumulative record of 170-13-5, and he’d gone 7-0 (6 KOs) while doing it. But none of them had much tested him, and only one had been undefeated when Donaire got to him.
Hence the suspicions. As usual, doubts about a Top Rank fighter’s otherwise remarkable achievements are a backhanded compliment to matchmaker Bruce Trampler. There are few fighters in the world who beat other men effectively as Trampler handicaps them. Trampler makes great fighters. And his brilliance might just be that rarest thing in our beloved, embellished sport: an underestimated entity.
Which is why a few folks out there remain shy of totally convinced by what their eyes saw Saturday when Donaire obliterated a man many suspected was, at worst, the world’s second-best bantamweight.
But Montiel was a 31 year-old tactician on a 12-fight unbeaten streak, for goodness’ sake! And he knocked-out Hozumi Hasegawa in Tokyo – something our prizefighting betters assured us was without precedent in modern bantamweight history.
Well, maybe. But what some saw Saturday was the same old Fernando Montiel, the guy who looked pretty good against Pramuansak Posuwan in Boxing World Cup ’05 and then pretty bad against Jhonny Gonzalez seven months later. When that impression was married to the data from HBO’s unofficial fight-night scale, showing Montiel’s body had grown 13 percent in fewer than 30 hours, the venti cup of credibility poured for us last week had some room left at the top.
Things aren’t the way they used to be. HBO’s trustworthiness as a boxing programmer in the last five years has been publicly challenged often enough, and by sources credible enough, that no subscriber any longer assumes a fight or fighter is great because HBO says so. The on-air talent knows this and often takes an apologetic or even defensive bent in its broadcasts; only Roy Jones Jr. remains an evangelist.
But none of this undermines how good Donaire looked Saturday. From the opening minute, he was in an entirely different class from Montiel’s. Where the Mexican looked tense and doubtful, Donaire looked fluid and assured. Where Montiel threw tentative range-finding punches, Donaire uncoiled counter hooks flamboyant for their commitment so early in a championship fight.
Donaire did not go after Montiel as a world champion making a title defense on boxing-television’s largest stage; he went after him like Montiel was just another hand-picked extra in an off-Broadway pay-per-view show. Montiel may not have been everything others promised, but he was still a hell of a lot better than Donaire made him look.
And because of the way he comported himself both during and after the fight, you have to believe Donaire when he says the few jabs and tentative right hands Montiel landed in the second stanza were part of a plan. First, Donaire allowed Montiel to touch him with the left. Then, when that succeeded, Donaire allowed Montiel to hang his jab, trigger a weak right-hand from Donaire, and try a left-hook counter behind it.
Soon as Montiel was confident enough to commit to a right cross, Donaire had him unconscious on the canvas, legs and arms twitching like a beetle tipped on its shell.
And that wasn’t enough? No, not quite. There is, after all, a Bantamweight Tournament being fought on Showtime. Its champion will be decided in Los Angeles two months from now. Whether he is Joseph Agbeko or Abner Mares, that champion will have undergone a more-public test than Donaire has. Will Mares or Agbeko fair any better against Donaire than Montiel did? Maybe not. But we won’t know till they fight.
Asked for his future plans, Saturday, Donaire said exactly the right thing: “I think that I want to be undisputed in this weight class.”
If Donaire handles the winner of the Bantamweight Tournament successfully, we’ll know he is the future of boxing. If not, we’ll have to see what boxing holds for Donaire’s future.
GOLDEN GLOVES
Writing of boxing’s future, at least in South Texas, it will be on display this week in San Antonio when the city hosts its 2011 Regional Golden Gloves Tournament. Festivities begin Tuesday night at 7:30 PM in the Woodlawn Gym on Cincinnati Avenue and culminate Saturday night at the majestic Municipal Auditorium, downtown.
You want a darkhorse pick? Happily: San Antonio Parks & Rec’s Benjamin Mendoza in the sub-novice heavyweight division.
Bart Barry can be reached at bbarry@15rounds.com.