By Ronnie Nathanielsz

There is a deal of uncertainty surrounding the upcoming fights of WBO bantamweight champion Gerry Penalosa and IBF/IBO flyweight champion Nonito “The Filipino Flash” Donaire.

In the meantime Top Rank promoter Bob Arum who is now in New York and couldn’t be contacted as we attempted to clarify the situation.

Penalosa who is leaving for Baguio City Monday to begin training with Donaire said he had received no news from Arum who had earlier announced that he and Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer had made an offer to Penalosa to fight Juan Manuel “Juanma” Lopez for the WBO super bantamweight title on April 4 in New York or Las Vegas.

Under the plan Arum laid out by Arum in a conversation with insidesports.ph, Standard Today and Viva Sports, Penalosa would relinquish his title and WBO super flyweight champion Fernando Montiel who is having problems making the 115 pound limit would fight Erik Morel for the vacant WBO bantamweight title. Morel is the mandatory challenger to Penalosa and a purse bid had been set for January 12 but there’s reportedly been little interest in that fight.

With Montiel fighting Morel under the Arum plan, Montiel’s WBO super flyweight crown would be vacant and Donaire will move up to fight Jose “Carita” Lopez for the title. However, that appears untenable since Lopez is scheduled to fight No. 1 contender Pramuansak Posuwan of Thailand on February 2 in Puerto Rico and had gone through the pre-weigh-in earlier in the week.

However. Penalosa said Donaire was already in Baguio City to step up training for his scheduled March 15 title fight in Manila and he would join the training camp at the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines facilities in the summer capital on Monday along with elder brother and former world champion Dodie Boy Penalosa and another brother Jonathan Penalosa.

Dodie Boy will train Donaire, Jonathan will handle the punch-mitts and Gerry will discuss strategy and point out any visible flaws in Donaire as he prepares to move up to the 115 pound limit where Penalosa was the former WBC world champion.

Penalosa said he plans to leave for Baguio on Monday after a meeting with Cotabato vice governor Manny Pinol and ABS-CBN vice president for Sports Peter Musngi regarding a possible tune-up fight on February 21 on a card put together by governor Pinol and to be telecast by the giant broadcast network.

Penalosa was hoping to fight Heriberto Ruiz who scored an impressive eight round decision of WBO No,.1 Rey “Boom Boom” Bautista, in a ten round bout but that too has fallen through since Ruiz has signed to fight Mauricio Martinez in Toronto, Canada on March 20.