Underdog Boxing: Who is to blame for the Donaire-Narvaez travesty?

A reigning and defending unified champion battled a former two time world champion who went up in weight for the first time. The fight, even if the names are withheld, should have been at least fun to watch. Nonito Donaire scored a unanimous decision victory over the erstwhile undefeated Omar Narvaez of Argentina. In this article, I won’t tell you how he did it. Watching the fight was pretty painful and making a blow-by-blow account of something like that isn’t something I want to do and I’m pretty sure it’s not something you’d want to read about. The point here is to try to make sense of everything, to look back at how this fight was made, and to judge where we are all headed to next. Narvaez was selected as Donaire’s opponent because he was undefeated. All the top bantamweights were tied up in fights against each other so Bob Arum decided to look elsewhere for an opponent. El Huracan, as he is called in his home country, knew that he was basically selling his undefeated streak to Arum. Although he had 35 wins under his belt, he really hasn’t fought anyone of worth. He feasted on carefully selected Class B and C fighters throughout his career. He knew what he was getting into. He knew he had no shot to beat someone like Donaire. So he cashed in his check and did the smart thing, at least for him. He was going to lose anyway so he decided not to get hurt in the process. He knew how we were all harping about Donaire scoring another highlight reel knockout so he fooled us all and fought to survive. Is Narvaez to blame for what happened? Yes, absolutely. However, he shouldn’t take all of the blame. There are other individuals who had their hand in giving the fans that horrible 12 round match. Top Rank Promotions and Arum should also take some of the heat. They selected an unproven fighter to fight Donaire in what was supposed to be his coming out party after being sidelined for so long. They decided that a fighter with a good-looking résumé will help boost Donaire’s stock after this fight. They also didn’t know much about Narvaez but they felt they didn’t need to know anything about him other than the fact that he is a two-division world champion and is undefeated. Donaire’s corner also deserves some heat. After the first round, it was already obvious that Narvaez wasn’t there to fight back. However, Robert Garcia failed to instruct Donaire on what he can do to knock this guy out. He was basically fighting the same way in all of the 12 rounds. A lot of boxing observers have said that this match reminded them of Manny Pacquiao’s fight against Joshua Clottey. To a certain extent, they are correct. Both Clottey and Narvaez parked their gloves in their faces all night and refused to let their hands go. However, the difference there is that Clottey was towering over Pacquiao. He was taller, stronger, and bigger than Pacquiao. Donaire on the other hand had all the physical advantages over Narvaez yet he failed to capitalize on these strengths. “He should have gone to the body" was but one of the suggestions we’ve heard from the commentators and it was a very good suggestion. Donaire could have also tried out turning his opponent. All night long, he was trying to barrel down through the middle, where Narvaez’ defense was concentrated. If he only tried circling around Narvaez, he could have chances to find openings. In the end, the fight did not hurt Donaire’s stock. He still is one of the best fighters in the world and he still is one of the new breed of fighters who’ll headline boxing cards for years to come. However, this fight did not add anything to his stock either. Donaire said that he’d move up to the super bantamweight division next and we can only hope that he gets an opponent that will bring out the best in him. Jorge Arce is clearly the first choice as he is also under the Top Rank banner which means that this fight will be very easy to make. We all know that Arce has more fight in his left arm than Narvaez has in his entire body so that match is something we should be excited about. Toshiaki Nishioka, Christian Mijares, and even Rafael Marquez are all possible opponents for Donaire and these fighters can all give Donaire a run for his money. We have yet to see the best of Donaire. Although it sucks that fans did not get to see the fight they wanted, there is reason to believe that this is only a minor speed bump for Donaire. - OMG, GMA News