Nonito Donaire Deserves Comeback Fighter Award
By Teodoro Medina Reynoso
PhilBoxing.com
Thu, 03 Mar 2022
With pound for pound king Canelo Alvarez continuing his winning ways and a few others putting up splendid performances in 2021, Nonito Donaire would be a long shot in being named as Fighter of the Year by any of the major international boxing awards giving bodies.
Nonito, together with his wife, Rachel, has been nominated for yearend awards by the prestigious Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA) as Fighter of the Year for 2021. Rachel has also been named for the Manager of the Year honor.
This time though, Donaire may not be able to duplicate the feat he achieved ten years ago when he became the unanimous choice as Fighter of the Year awardee in 2012 by the BWAA, the venerable Ring Magazine, ESPN and Sports Illustrated Magazine.
But Nonito, I firmly believe, is deserving at the very least the Comeback Fighter of the Year award.
The so dubbed Filipino Flash came storming back from a heartbreaking loss to Naoya Inoue in November of 2019 where he came tantalizingly close to become the first fighter to beat and knockout the phenomenal Japanese Monster and from pandemic forced inactivity in 2020 to win the WBC bantamweight crown from France's Nordine Oubaali in 2021. He likewise inserted a maiden title defense before the year was over, pinning the first loss, also by knockout on fellow Filipino WBC interim titlist Raymart Gaballo.
Nonito had previously enjoyed a banner Year in 2018, scaling down from as high as featherweight or 126 lbs to win the WBA bantamweight super title on his first fight returning to the 118 lbs class by stopping streaking UK defending champion Ryan Burnett. The Filipino had reigned as WBC and WBO bantamweight titlist stopping Mexico's deadly punching Fernando Montiel but did not get to fight for the WBA belt than worn by another Mexican Ruben Mares.
Hence, Nonito losing his WBA bantamweight super crown on points to Inoue in 2019 after just a lone successful defense against American Stephon Young likewise by KO was a bitter pill to swallow.
A lesser fighter would have given up continuing to fight on given another sorry loss at such advance age in what appeared as a last dash to recapture ring glory.
But not Nonito.
Instead of being disheartened, Nonito found inspiration in his magnificent defeat to Inoue and resolved to fight on for another fling at boxing redemption and glory.
The boxing gods rewarded him with another chance resulting to yet another WBC bantamweight crown in 2021 and very possibly another crack at Inoue with three world titles at stake this year.
Donaire's comeback does not only represent a career resuscitation but an unprecedented successful attempt of a warrior boxer to reinvent himself by going down in weight, which is extremely rare and very difficulty to accomplish.
Boxing has seen Carlos Ortiz coming back from a world title loss at junior welterweight to Italian Dullio Loi in the early 60s to win the world lightweight championship from Joe Brown and establish a long reign for the rest of that decade and stake his claim as among the greatest lightweight fighters ever.
But this is the first time in modern boxing history that a fighter has gone down two divisions lower to win a world championship not once but twice already! And possibly a third this year if Inoue and the pandemic situation in Japan would grant it.
If the Inoue rematch unification would fall through for any reasons, Donaire has set his sights on winning a fifth divisional world championship by going even further down to the junior bantamweight or super flyweight to fight for any available world title against any of the major champions there as Juan Francisco Estrada, Roman Chocolatito Gonzales or Kazuto Ioka (tough luck, Jerwin Ancajas lost his crown recently).
By any measure, what a fighter. What a man!
The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.
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