By Michael Collins: Gary Hyde, the manager for unbeaten WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (9-0, 7 KO’s), hopes to have him fighting Nonito Donaire (27-1, 18 KO’s) by this summer, according to boxrec.com.
Donaire first must fight Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. for the vacant WBO super bantamweight title on February 4th, and if Donaire wins that fight then Hyde plans on trying to set up the Donaire-Rigondeaux bout.
Hyde is going to have to do some convincing of both Donaire and his promoters at Top Rank, because they’re taking a different course after the Vazquez Jr. fight and want to fight the better known Jorge Arce, and then possibly WBC super bantamweight champion Toshiaki Nishioka. Those will likely be the last two fights for Donaire at this weight class unless Hyde can get him to fight Rigondeaux before the Arce and Nishioka fights.
Hyde told boxrec.com “We are going to get him [Rigondeaux] out in April or May and we are looking at Donaire for that. Nonito Donaire’s name is being linked up with a fight with Rigondeaux so I think that is the fight we are going to be looking at before the summer. Donaire is a huge fight.”
It is a huge fight if you can get Donaire to take it. He seems to be completely uninterested in facing Rigondeaux for some reason and is more interested in fighting Vazquez Jr., who was just knocked out last year. It doesn’t really make sense when you think about it. Donaire doesn’t want to fight an unbeaten fighter with two gold medals, 400 amateur fights, including six Cuban national titles and who is well respected by hardcore boxing fans. Instead, Donaire prefers to fight a guy that was knocked out last year by Jorge Arce. I guess it makes sense if you’re looking for a slightly better known fighter. Then, yeah, Vazquez Jr. is probably the way to go rather than facing Rigondeaux. However, I think he’ll ultimately be much more popular than Vazquez Jr. is. I don’t know how hard that will be because Vazquez Jr. is more known on the east coast of the U.S.
Rigondeaux recently cut loose his American trainer Ronnie Shields after a short period of time working with him. Rigondeaux also let Freddie Roach go as his trainer after an equally small amount of time with him. For whatever reason, Rigondeaux decided he didn’t like how the training was going and moved on. Rigondeaux is now being trained by Cuban Ismael Salas, who previously trained Yuriorkis Gamboa. It looks like Salas and Rigondeaux are working together well judging by Rigondeaux’s excellent performance in beating Rico Ramos last Friday night.