It was grim, gruesome, and glorious?Nicholas ?Axe Man? Walters turned the StubHub Center in Carson, California, into his own personal Grand Guignol by butchering Nonito Donaire in six brutal rounds on Saturday night to re-join two halves of a ridiculously-split featherweight title.
Looking to reignite his dimming career, Donaire instead saw it sputter in a highlight-reel splatterama that left him stumbling, dazed, and, ultimately, sutured. A slight short-ender entering the fight, Donaire, who had been lackluster in several of his most recent starts, took on the dangerous but untested Walters, 25-0 (21), in a rare matchup of significance.
Donaire, San Leandro, California, opened the fight circling on the perimeter, looking to draw an advancing Walters into his quicksilver left hook. Walters, meanwhile, established a steady jab designed to keep Donaire from setting himself and ripping powershots that had, in the past, left wreckage in the ring.
In the second, Donaire began to open up with lead left hooks, especially to the body, and some popping rights from the outside. For his part, Walters, from Montego Bay, Jamaica, but fighting out of Panama, remained behind his jab, except when he initiated a fierce exchange late in a neutral corner. There, with only a few seconds to go in the round, Donaire unleashed a left hook that sent Walters reeling, but the bell rang, and Donaire lost his chance to close the show. Walters, disoriented, staggered to his corner to recuperate. A minute of rest, apparently, is all someone nicknamed ?The Axe Man? needs to recover from apparent misfortune.
After landing a few crack rights and pushing Walters back early in the third, Donaire, 125 ?, made the fateful decision to move in for the kill. Abandoning his run-and-gun style on the outside, he pressed Walters, who eventually made him pay for his reckless aggression. Walters has a right uppercut that can probably punch holes through a Richard Serra sculpture?at least it looks that way against ex-flyweights?and the pinpoint blow he landed on an onrushing Donaire was a snapshot of the terrible beauty boxing can sometimes produce. Donaire plummeted like a man who had stepped through a trap door in the dark. Although he beat the count and managed to survive the round, he never seriously threatened Walters again.
In the fourth, Walters, also 125 ?, advanced behind his punishing jab and staggered Donaire whenever he landed it. By then, barely ten minutes into the fight, Donaire, with a cut over his right eye, was unspooling faster than the chain of an anchor dropped in a high seas emergency. Behind all the super-athlete talk, the flashy moves, the knee-jerk P-4-P palaver, and the hypoxic training methods?and, yes, even the annihilation of a handful of competent bantamweights and super bantamweights over the years?Nonito Donaire appears to have been, ultimately, a dilettante. This sounds odd in light of his accomplishments, but Donaire has never been especially dedicated to his craft. Despite claiming to have trained his hardest in years, for example, Donaire was virtually through after three rounds against a relative neophyte. There is no room for dabblers in boxing, no matter how talented they may be, and when a fighter as hungry as Walters is standing across the ring, then a Sports-As-Social Darwinism moment cannot be far behind. Like the character of Oh Dae-su in Old Boy, Walters could have proved his existential hunger before the match by muttering, ?Give me something alive to eat.? In the first real test of his career, Walters made Donaire his Black-and-Blue Plate Special for the night.
The longer the fight went on, the more Donaire revealed one of his greatest weaknesses: an inability to box based on an organizing principle. While Walters, 28, stepped behind his jab and picked his shots selectively to force openings or to take advantage of them, Donaire winged one ragtag shot after another. Occasionally, they landed but, more often than not, they merely left Donaire open for stinging countershots.
In the fifth round, a bruised Donaire tried to out-will Walters on the inside, but he threw isolated shots?instead of combinations?and allowed Walters to retaliate with hard rights and hooks. Infighting is not something Donaire, 31, is particularly good at, and, although he landed his share of punches, Walters was more effective at close range. A flurry off the ropes at the end of the fifth by Donaire gave some hope that the ?Filipino Flash? could still do some damage, but that hope was decapitated by Walters just a few minutes later.
With Donaire pawing at his cut and now on the retreat, Walters opened up a crossfire attack in the sixth. Only a few seconds were left in the round when a wild left hook left Donaire open for a counter right that sent him crashing on his face like a stunt double. Incredibly, Donaire beat the count, but his stutter-stepping convinced Referee Raul Caiz, Jr., to stop the action. Donaire, bruised, bloody, and befuddled, was in no condition to continue.
The same, perhaps, can be said about his career.
Between his explosive knockout of Vic Darchinyan in 2007 and his loss to Guillermo Rigondeaux last year, Donaire, now 33-3 (21), built a record too common in boxing these days: one filled with lacunae. After millions of dollars and a slew of headline fights, there are few signature wins or defining moments on his ledger. Because fighters are assets?at one point or another?to both promoters and networks, they are seldom risked for fear of devaluing their (often abstract) worth. Add the fractious divide between managers, promoters, and television executives, and you have a formula for fighters going years between marquee matchups. Donaire had a good run, but with a little more dedication and fewer politics, it might have been something special.
Now Walters, whose only notable win until now had been a kayo of creaky Vic Darchinyan last May, will have a chance to make his mark. Prizefighters often trade more than hooks and crosses when they meet in the ring. On Saturday night, Walters and Donaire swapped futures, a precious commodity in a pursuit where the present can become the past in a flashpoint.
