I originally predicted Nonito Donaire will glide to a convincing decision victory in Saturday?s long-awaited rematch with Vic Darchinyan. In their 2007 first meeting, Donaire was striving successfully for that kind of fight, when he landed his famous fifth-round counter left hook that handed Darchinyan his first defeat. If he fights Darchinyan the same way in the rematch, a full 10 rounds is more probable than not.
But Donaire says ?someone?s going down.? In that vein, or any other, Darchinyan is the more likely to fall in the 10-round featherweight bout airing on HBO on Saturday, sandwiched between Mikey Garcia?s main-event bid for Roman ?Rocky? Martinez?s 130-pound title and a battle of superwelterweights Vanes Martirosyan and Demetrius Andrade in Corpus Christi, Texas, where I?ll be at ringside.
History is on Donaire?s side, and Darchinyan, 37, didn?t seem to be reckoning with that Tuesday during a media teleconference. ?I?ve been waiting for this fight for a long time, for six years,? said Darchinyan, having already attributed his inability to continue in the fifth round of the first fight to his lack of familiarity with being a knockdown victim. ?I don?t have only power, I have skills. It doesn?t matter how old I am.?
Ah, but it does, Vic. He pointed out that he runs 15 miles more effortlessly than ever these days, but he doesn?t concede that he can?t pull the trigger on his left cross as quickly as he used to. Even Donaire, who turns 31 on Nov. 16, concedes he?ll soon start losing trigger speed himself.
Or has Darchinyan even carried his knockout power from 112 pounds to 126? He certainly has not dominated at 115 pounds or 118 pounds the way he did at 112 before Donaire knocked him off. Darchinyan bragged about the two-year run after the Donaire loss in which he thrashed both Cristian Mijares and Jorge Arce, but didn?t bring up the four losses he incurred from July 2010 on.
He said he got robbed by the judges in two, including his Showtime Bantamweight Tournament loss to Abner Mares, and that he tried too hard to knock out Joseph Agbeko in a close fight (which Agbeko won convincingly). As for his loss to Anselmo Morales, which somewhat resembled Donaire?s loss last April to slippery Guillermo Rigondeaux, Darchinyan simply acknowledged that Morales was the wrong opponent for him.
Guess who else is the wrong opponent for him?
Donaire?s loss to Rigondeaux called into question whether Donaire has the want-to that enabled him to vanquish Darchinyan and become a superstar. That was the crux of the advance I wrote for Saturday?s San Francisco Chronicle, for which I?m credentialed to report Saturday. He had confessed, in the meantime, a lack of resolve for the Rigondeaux fight as well as lack of a game plan, but he backed off the former a bit this week but admitted, ?we?re trying to change the whole thing mentally.
?We?re getting back to the old me, the smarter me.?
It helps to have his father back in his corner. Robert Garcia remains the chief second, but Nonito Donaire Sr., who trained Jun until 2008, has been supervising conditioning and told me Thursday he will have a say in the corner during the fight, though deferring to Garcia.
While we were talking; in fact during the entire media event Thursday at Corpus Christi?s science museum, Nonito Sr. was carrying his new grandson, Nonito Jr. and Rachel?s son, Jorel, and that wasn?t unusual. The grandson has created the needed connection to the past that the Donaires are making and Darchinyan can only wish for.
?It?s not about him. It?s about me,? Darchinyan said. ?I have more power, more skills. I know everything he?s going to do . . . and I?m going to demolish him.?
Whatever.
