Six years ago, Filipino boxing star Nonito Donaire, the unanimous 2012 Fighter of the Year after winning four matches including a super bantamweight championship burst into the boxing scene after a thrilling fifth round stoppage of then flyweight champion Vic Darchinyan.
Darchinyan looks to even the score when he meets his former tormentor Saturday, November 9 at 9 p.m. EST at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi, Texas in a match to be aired on HBO.
Donaire's momentum was sidetracked at the start of 2013 when he was handily beaten by Guillermo Rigondeaux. Once one of the top ten fighters in the world, Donaire went back to the drawing board and moved up in weight class. In his first match since the loss to Rigondeaux, Donaire is eyeing to prove that his win over the highly regarded Darchinyan was no fluke.
"We trained for that one punch," said Donaire to Boxing.com as he recalled his thrilling stoppage of Darchinyan in 2007. "We trained for the things that we knew he would do. We trained for his impatience and that's what we showed. We worked on it and that's how we were able to land the big punch.
"I have been waiting for this fight for six years," he said. "I trained good for this fight and I am very prepared. I don't only have power. I have skills and I can't wait to show the people," said Darchinyan as quoted by Boxing.com
The odds seem to favor Donaire, who at 30 is seven years younger than Darchinyan. However, the latter insists that age is just a number and that he will go guns ablaze against his younger foe.
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