There must be times when talented Pinoy boxing champion Nonito Donaire feels like the opening act for Bruce Springsteen or the guy who got to sing after Mr. Sinatra was done.
It can?t be easy on the ego to be so popular in your homeland yet still be so many miles behind uber popular Manny Pacquiao.
Look, he?s only 26 and if the Filipino Flash plays his cards right, he will be THE MAN after Manny retires.
But young men in their mid-20?s don?t want to hear about the distant future. They are all about right now.
I got to thinking of Donaire when some well-meaning fight scribe was going on and on the other day about how some champion should just abandon his world title belt.
So many people in boxing who should get it, don?t understand what the cheap trinkets from the Alphabet Groups mean and symbolize to most belt holders.
Great Mexican warrior Israel Vazquez reconfirmed to me Friday night at the Boxing Writers Dinner the story of how WBC leader Don Jose Sulaiman came to a Mexico City gym when Izzy was a skinny eight-year-old. Sulaiman carried a green and gold WBC belt and the diadem dazzled the youngster.
?I said then that one day, I will win that belt,? Vazquez said. ?I was able to do that.?
Examiner colleague Colin Seymour in the Bay Area has advised Donaire to shed his IBF flyweight belt rather than go through with a low paying rematch against South Africa?s Moruti Mthalane and the scribe is not wrong.
Donaire needs to go up in weight and get away from the ?ghetto? that I call the Diana Ross weight classes, the region from 105 pounds up to about the bantamweight limit of 118 pounds.
Frankly, minus his scorching KO over Vic Darchinyan and being a Filipino when boxing interest is at an all time high in RPI, Donaire might just be another tiny guy like Puerto Rico?s Little Giant Ivan Calderon laboring in semi-obscurity and for money that lightweights, welterweights and bigger champs have in their tip jar.
In three piercing paragraphs, Seymour summarized Donaire?s dilemma and injected some good humor as well:
?You can?t blame the IBF for trying to get maximum mileage out of Donaire. He is in line for an August fight, all right, but he wants to be fighting for a 115-pound belt, not 112. Jose ?Carita? Lopez is the targeted (but elusive) opponent, Las Vegas is the likely venue (the notion of staging the bout in San Francisco becoming a distant memory), and Aug. 15 is now the rumored date.
It is not fair to say that the IBF?s Mthalane mandate is reason for Donaire to flee to 115. Frankly, it will be amazing if he stops at 115 for more than two fights on his way to 118. Donaire felt sorry for Mthalane after the unsatisfactory ending of their fight and probably wouldn?t mind seeing him wear the belt. But Donaire is afraid only of the 112-pound weight limit, not the fighters who can still reach it.
The guy who wants to fight Fernando Montiel at 118 and Juan Manuel Lopez at 122 or 126 does not need the 112-pound belt anymore. It?s worth about what my ?88 Camry with 277,000 miles on it is to me ? sentimental value provided the upkeep doesn?t prove prohibitively expensive.?
That last part is illuminating because, at Examiner page view pay rates, I figured inkstained wretch Seymour to be behind the wheel of a Hummer or a Rolls Royce, some hot vehicle like that. I thought maybe he even employed a chauffeur named Jeeves or Charles.
But Seymour hits on the real sentimental value of a belt to fighters. Don?t forget that in the amateur ranks guys are fighting only for trophies and other trinkets, symbol of ring success.
You can go to any rough neighborhood in Brooklyn or The Bronx and it?s not hard to find some young man or woman these days who proudly wears the New York Golden Gloves two glove necklace.
That?s a symbol of success and gives the wearer certain bragging rights. Now that I think about it, they probably act as effective thug repellents as well.
But Donaire is in the punch for pay business now.
If Gary Shaw and Darchi can?t be bothered going for a rematch, who really cares?
Maybe Donaire can leave that pair eating his smoke anyway by blazing his way through higher weight classes.
Certainly, Donaire has more commercial value than Seymour?s wheezy, ?88 Camry.
It?s always about the money, the bottom line, for a Pacquiao or a Donaire.
So Donaire?s goal is simple, best opponents for the most do-re-mi in whatever weight class is best for his body.
But too often people overlook the symbolic importance of those trinkets.
The coveted green jacket that goes to the Masters golf champion is just a piece of cloth but what it represents, the status and the history behind, is priceless to multimillionaires such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
No golfer can run over to Wal-Mart or to Neiman-Marcus and buy one of those.
And you can?t get a world title belt in a Crackerjack box.
