Underdog Boxing: Donaire stirs controversy anew, signs with Golden Boy Promotions

There is a huge gap between Bob Arum’s Top Rank Promotions and Oscar de la Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions. The rivalry boiled over when Golden Boy Promotions tried to sign Manny Pacquiao to a contract even if he had an existing deal with Top Rank. Now the tiff will only get worse and another Filipino fighter is in the middle of it all. Nonito Donaire supposedly left Top Rank for Golden Boy Promotions because he and his team claimed that a stipulation in their contract was breached making Donaire a free agent. Top Ranked promised to get Donaire three fights a year but he has only fought seven times in the past three years. Arum explained that their contract is still valid because that time when Donaire was under medical suspensions would be added to their original contract. According to him, the contract would be valid until 2013. However, Donaire’s team and Golden Boy Promotions both felt that there was no legal impediment to the new contract. This contract may be beneficial to Donaire in the short term. None of the three opponents Donaire wants for his next fight are signed under the Top Rank banner. Anselmo Moreno is a free agent, Abner Mares is with Golden Boy, and Joseph Agbeko is with Don King. There are also rumors that Moreno will sign with Golden Boy Promotions which will make a Donaire-Moreno fight very easy to make. But in the long run, this looks like a bad decision for Donaire for the simple fact that the biggest names in the super bantamweight and featherweight division are all under Top Rank. Wilfredo Vasquez, Jr., Juan Manuel Lopez, and Yuriorkis Gamboa are all with Top Rank. Donaire will undoubtedly earn more money against the Top Rank guys compared to Golden Boy’s bantamweight contenders. The biggest fight Donaire can have in the near future is against Gamboa or Lopez and signing with GBP basically means he’ll never get that fight. I will not look past the fact that Top Rank may have dropped the ball early in their relationship with Donaire but they have been trying to rectify this error. They gave him a good fight against Wladimir Sidorenko which was the perfect set-up for his fight against Fernando Montiel, the opponent Donaire had been chasing for so long. The fact that Top Rank was able to make the Donaire-Montiel fight should have been enough to make Donaire stay. The Donaire issue is just another battle ground for the rivalry between Top Rank and Golden Boy. There’s a risk that Top Rank will try to freeze Donaire by not letting him fight until the issue is settled and this will mean that all the momentum he has built up with the big win over Montiel will be long gone. Arum will not take this sitting down. He has already filed a lawsuit but it will not stop there. I have received information that a top fighter from the Golden Boy banner will be jumping ship to Top Rank. -- GMA News