A reigning and defending unified champion battled a former two time world champion who went up in weight for the first time. The fight, even if the names are withheld, should have been at least fun to watch.
Nonito Donaire scored a unanimous decision victory over the erstwhile undefeated Omar Narvaez of Argentina. In this article, I won?t tell you how he did it. Watching the fight was pretty painful and making a blow-by-blow account of something like that isn?t something I want to do and I?m pretty sure it?s not something you?d want to read about.
The point here is to try to make sense of everything, to look back at how this fight was made, and to judge where we are all headed to next.
Narvaez was selected as Donaire?s opponent because he was undefeated. All the top bantamweights were tied up in fights against each other so Bob Arum decided to look elsewhere for an opponent.
El Huracan, as he is called in his home country, knew that he was basically selling his undefeated streak to Arum. Although he had 35 wins under his belt, he really hasn?t fought anyone of worth. He feasted on carefully selected Class B and C fighters throughout his career.
He knew what he was getting into. He knew he had no shot to beat someone like Donaire. So he cashed in his check and did the smart thing, at least for him. He was going to lose anyway so he decided not to get hurt in the process. He knew how we were all harping about Donaire scoring another highlight reel knockout so he fooled us all and fought to survive.
Is Narvaez to blame for what happened? Yes, absolutely. However, he shouldn?t take all of the blame. There are other individuals who had their hand in giving the fans that horrible 12 round match.
