No wonder Team Donaire was so confident Guillermo Rigondeaux would be easy pickin?s in Saturday?s super-bantamweight title match. They?d barely seen the guy fight.
As a result, they didn?t concoct a fight plan to cope with Rigondeaux?s edge in quickness. They didn?t know Nonito Donaire would have to counteract that from the get-go without his usual degree of counter-punching.
By the time Donaire reckoned he would have to carry the super-bantamweight title unification fight at New York?s Radio City Music Hall, he had squandered the first three rounds and still didn?t have most of the right answers.
Had he tried to land a high volume of punches (relative to Rigondeaux?s outstanding defense) he might well have outpointed him. The judging wasn?t a landslide as it was.
In the heat of battle, which was where Donaire?s game plan called for all decisions to be made, he chose to go for a one-punch knockout, and he stepped up that strategy in the 11th and 12 rounds when, as it turned out, the scoring hung in the balance
He was punished those two rounds when he failed to land the big one and punished all the more when he failed to land enough lesser punches to win those rounds and steal the decision.
He?s getting what he deserves for what is proving to have been a cavalier approach to preparing for the best opponent he?s ever faced.
By the way, his recent split with nutritionist Victor Conte probably wasn?t much of a factor in his defeat. Donaire didn?t need continued supervision to maintain his regimen, and his energy level was adequate to keep him in the fight. Ditto for his impending fatherhood.
After a few months of baby-bonding, Donaire will be capable of winning a rematch with Rigondeaux, though even then he might go in as the underdog.
Surely he?ll study films of this fight — again and again and again.
