Boxing: Nonito Donaire Thriving in Virtual Anonymity

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Is it possible for a reigning world champion and former “Fighter of the Year” of fairly recent vintage to headline his own pay-per-view card, do his thing before 25,000 screaming, supportive fans and knock down and bloody his outclassed challenger three times en route to a dominating third-round stoppage, all in virtual anonymity?

Well, yes, but it is hardly an unusual occurrence for 33-year-old Nonito Donaire, the “Filipino Flash,” who, despite 15 years of professional boxing experience and with world titles in four separate weight classes, still knows the sting of sometimes being overlooked and underappreciated.

To be fair, Donaire’s three-round thrashing of Hungary’s Zsolt Bedak was no small thing in Cebu City, in the WBO junior featherweight champ’s birth nation of the Philippines. There, his star status has increased with the announced retirement -- we will have to see if that lasts -- of that country’s most beloved sports hero, Manny Pacquiao, the only boxer to have won world titles in eight weight classes. However, the PPV telecast in the United States began at 8 a.m. ET, when many Americans, even the most ardent fight fans, are sleeping in, watching TV they do not have to pay for or finally rousing themselves to do some of that spring gardening they had been putting off. In any case, why purchase an early-morning PPV telecast from halfway around the world when later that same night, the two best pound-for-pound fighters on the planet, in the estimation of many experts, would be appearing in separate bouts on HBO?

It was, not unexpectedly, a big deal in the fight world at large when WBA/IBF middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin registered his 22nd consecutive knockout with a two-round blowout of the totally outclassed Dominic Wade, who was even less of a threat to “GGG” than the unfortunate Bedak was to Donaire; and WBC flyweight ruler Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez defended his title on a wide unanimous decision over a good opponent, McWilliams Arroyo, despite the fact that the Nicaraguan’s 10-fight KO streak came to a halt.

It was even a bigger deal when Golovkin called out the WBC middleweight champ, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, in the ring at The Forum in Inglewood, California, 12 hours after Donaire had celebrated his thrashing of Bedak by expressing his desire for a rematch with Guillermo Rigondeaux, the second man to have defeated him as a pro. Guess which one of those throw-down-the-gauntlet demands received more attention from the international boxing media not based in the Philippines?

“I didn’t get back into this title position to hold it to fight B- and C-level fighters,” Donaire (37-3, 24 KOs) told USA Today after he had beaten up Bedak (25-2, 8 KOs) to a fare-thee-well. “I want to be the best. I want to fight the best; and I’m willing to fight anybody: Rigondeaux, [Carl] Frampton, [Hugo] Ruiz. You name it.”

Donaire knows what it is like to have made it all the way to the top of the mountain where Golovkin and Gonzalez now enjoy the panoramic view. He was the consensus “Fighter of the Year” for 2012 after dispatching four highly regarded opponents: Wilfred Vasquez Jr., Jeffrey Mathebula, Toshiaki Nishioka and Jorge Arce, the last two inside the distance. He earned that prestigious designation from, among others, the Boxing Writers Association of America, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and Yahoo! Sports. He was the little guy -- then the WBO super bantamweight champion -- who seemed poised to become the first jockey-sized fighter to crack the seven-figure purse club since Michael “Little Hands of Stone” Carbajal and Humberto “Chiquita” Gonzalez (no relation to “Chocolatito”) each became members for their much-anticipated March 13, 1993 junior flyweight unification bout. Carbajal won on a spectacular seventh-round knockout after being floored himself in rounds two and five. It was such an epic display of heart and talent that it was named “Fight of the Year” by The Ring, which also honored Carbajal as its “Fighter of the Year.”

It was in the hopes of building on his 2012 success that Donaire agreed to a super bantamweight unification showdown with Cuban expatriate Rigondeaux on April 13, 2013, in New York City’s Radio City Music Hall. However, Rigondeaux was not disposed to play the role of “Chiquita” Gonzalez to Donaire’s Carbajal, and the clever southpaw, despite being knocked down in the 10th round, gave Donaire, who now fancied himself a power puncher, a clinically precise if somewhat dull boxing lesson in winning a unanimous decision.

With that loss, Donaire not only had lost his view from the top of that figurative mountain but had also tumbled all the way down to base camp. It would be a hard trek back to the summit. After he captured another world title, on a five-round technical decision over WBA super featherweight ruler Simpiwe Vetyeka of South Africa on May 31, 2014, he again appeared to be on the ascent. However, in his first defense of his new title, Donaire was chopped down in six rounds by Jamaica’s Nicholas “Axe Man” Walters a little more than five months later in Carson City, California. That beautiful mountaintop view now seemed farther away than ever.

With that said, Donaire is nothing if not resilient. He has now won four straight fights, the victory preceding the blowout of Bedak an action-packed slugfest with Mexico’s Cesar Juarez for the vacant WBO super bantam title. Donaire twice floored Juarez on the way to a unanimous decision that drew some consideration for 2014 “Fight of the Year.”

“Everyone is gunning for you,”Donaire said of the difference between being a champion and a former champion trying to find his way back into the inner circle. “That’s what I want. I have the power. If they [want it], come get it.”

Interestingly, Donaire’s status as an elite or near-elite fighter almost ended before it began. As a child, he emigrated with his family from the Philippines to San Leandro, California, in 1990. His father, Nonito Sr., was determined to develop his namesake, as well as older son Glenn, into boxing champions. Despite some success at the regional level, the Donaire boys were still relatively unknown when they arrived at the 2000 U.S. Olympic Boxing Team Trials in Tampa, Florida, where both would compete in the light flyweight division. That was where the young Nonito would get his first bitter taste of disappointment.

First, Glenn would lose a controversial decision to Brian Viloria, setting the stage for Nonito, then 17, to drop an even more hotly disputed 8-6 computerized decision to Viloria, the reigning USA Boxing “Fighter of the Year” and 1999 world amateur champion. In protest of what they believed were biased verdicts for Viloria, whom many had perceived as America’s best hope for a gold medal at the 2000 Olympics, the Donaire brothers -- along with their father, coach Robert Salinas and family friend Jaquin Gallardo -- staged a five-minute sitdown strike in the ring prior to Glenn’s losers’ bracket matchup with Karoz Norman, which he would have been favored to win. Had he done so, he would have moved on to a bout with his brother for the right to take on Viloria again at the U.S. Olympic box-offs in Mashantucket, Connecticut. However, the Donaires’ stance precluded either from getting that opportunity.

Years later, Nonito said he was reluctant to take part in the staged protest and did so only at Salinas’ urging, thus eliminating any chance of displacing Viloria on the team that went to Sydney. As it was, Viloria lost in an early bout with eventual gold medalist Brahim Asloum of France and did not advance to the medal round.

“I was naïve at that time,” Nonito said in 2009. “Whoever led me to make that decision, my brother and I went along because we were convinced that no matter what we did, there was no way for us to come out ahead. Neither one of us was the ‘Chosen One.’ Viloria was. The politics of amateur boxing discouraged me to the point where for a while I didn’t care about it. My idea was to forget about boxing and to go to school. I actually did quit boxing for a year or so.”

With no Olympic pedigree and having taken so much time off to nurse his hurt feelings, Donaire returned to boxing with little or no fanfare. He dropped a unanimous decision to Rosendo Sanchez in his second pro bout but regrouped to put together a 16-fight winning streak, including nine knockouts. He earned his first shot at a world title against IBF flyweight champ Vic Darchinyan, whom he starched with one explosive left hook to the jaw on July 7, 2007.

That fight marked the introduction of Nonito Donaire -- the formerly slick-boxing, soft-punching kid who had won only five times inside the distance in compiling a 68-5 amateur record -- as a big bopper who had gained the man-strength to take him to a new level. However, Donaire’s reliance on his newfound power sometimes proved to be as much a detriment as a blessing.

“One of my flaws for a long time was relying on just one punch, because everybody succumbed to it,” he said prior to his more nuanced brutalization of Bedak. “But you know what? I learned a lot from that. That’s why I know you will see a big difference [against the Hungarian]. You’re going to see things from me you haven’t seen in a long, long time.”

Adding to the drama was the return to Donaire’s corner of his father, with whom he has had a strained relationship in recent years. If and when Donaire makes it back onto an HBO telecast, the tale of the bickering Nonitos is sure to be a part of the back story.

“I’ve had ups and downs in my relationship with my father,” the son admitted. “We’re back together now. Sometimes in life we forget the people that are close to us. The people that have always been there for me should be the first people I should thank. Another way I can say ‘Thank you’ to my dad is to dedicate this fight to him. I haven’t really acknowledged how good a tandem we were. He’s been training me for this fight. We didn’t start off good, but we became good by being persistent. At this moment, my dad might not be the perfect coach, but we’re going to get better and better.”

They say persistence pays. For Nonito Donaire, that really has been the fight plan all along.

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.