Nonito Doinaire Jr. has just handed Wladimir Sidorenko an expected beating at the Honda Center in Anaheim, setting the stage for a real test for the Filipino-American champ on Feb. 19 against proven Mexican veteran, Fernando Monitel, on Feb. 19.
In battering the Ukrainian, notching three knockdowns along the way to a fourth round TKO, the 25-1, 28 year old who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, added an exclamation point to his glittering ring resume and burnished his Pound for Pound credentials.
We’ve got plenty of time to analyze his 2011 bout against 43-2-2, 33 KOs Montiel–and to note it is yet another battle of the Filipino and Mexican flags.
I come tonight to praise Donaire, who got and continues to get some flack, for unceremoniously duming his trainer and father, Nonito Donaire Sr., and is now trained by Robert Garcia. (Yes, the Garcia who was “the bad guy” when he trained bad guy Antonio Margarito to fight Manny Pacquiao).
I come to praise Nonito Jr. and his flashy wife, Rachel, for their own Give A Convict a chance program.
The ex-con in question here, now firmyl lodged as an integral part of Team Donaire, is Victor Conte, the onetime Tower Of Power funk band sideman.
Or, as I have referred to the highly articulate and outspoken Conte as, the BALCO Bad Boy, the reference being to the Bay Area Co-Operative Laborary, the steroid “factory” where it is alleged that baseball superstars (Barry Bonds being the most prominent), boxing superstar Sugar Shane Mosley and other big name athletes got and learned how to use steroids and other illegal drugs in hopes of imprving their athletic performances.
It’s not like Conte was broke or desperate when he finished his four month prison stint on March 31, 2006.
But he wanted to go legit in sports and he was smart enough to realize that boxing, a sport filled with ex-convicts of various stripes, would be more accepting for him than the more regulated and reigmented team sports.
mean, can you ever picture Bonds’ old team, the San Francisco Giants, or the Oakland A’s hring Conte as a drug consultant with all his BALCO baggage?
Conte first worked with fringe heavyweight contender Eddie Chambers and, I think, a few other fighters but now he’s really making his mark as Donaire’s big stage career keeps blossoming.
It is a good and noble move by the oft-critcized Donaires, this hiring of Conte, this giving a man with a rap sheet a second chance.
Makes for a nice, warm Christmas story now that I think of it.
In a more starkly humorous vein, I’m reminded of the old Richard Pryor joke about the newly released convict who goes to a state run job office.
He’s asked by some ribbon clerk what occupational skills he has.
Drawing on his jail job, he answers, “I made license plates.”
And so, the lady bureaucrat resonds, what skills do you have?
“I am,” Pryor’s character snaps, “a license plate making motherbleeper.”
There’s not much call in the outside world for license plate makers.
There wasn’t much call for someone with Conte’s criminal record, either, but the Donaires took a chance.
It was a bold move, a humanitarian move, and I applaud them for it.
