By Dennis 'dSource' Guillermo
"That would be great for me," WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito "The Filipino Flash" Donaire said regarding the possibility of fighting undefeated Cuban featherweight Yuriorkis Gamboa.
His nickname may be "Flash", but even Donaire knows when to say "not too fast."
"I would like to fight the best guys out there, but I’m at 122 right now. I don't want to skip to a division where I know I'm small. And I'm still small at 122, that’s why I'm doing kettle bells, weight lifting and that kind of stuff,” Donaire told me when I asked him about stepping in for Brandon Rios as Gamboa’s next opponent.
On Wednesday, Top Rank Promotions slapped Gamboa with a lawsuit, claiming a breach of contract for the Cuban boxer's refusal to move forward with a scheduled April 14th fight against Brandon Rios at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
"That was a big surprise for me,” Donaire chimed in on Gamboa’s refusal to move forward against Rios. “He calls out Manny Pacquiao. He calls out all these guys. Now he has a fight with (Brandon) Rios, and he doesn't show up, and says that he doesn't want to fight anymore, or never got the contract, or whatever their dispute was,” he continued.
Gamboa claims he never signed a contract for the Rios fight, but it's common practice in the boxing industry to sign the bout agreement several weeks, and even months, after the actual terms are agreed upon. Donaire shared his own experiences stating that he too has fought several times without signing the fight contract until fight week.
“When I fought (Vic) Darchinyan, I didn't get to sign the contract until the day of the weigh-in,” Donaire revealed, and added, “As a matter of fact, there's a lot of fights that I've fought--the Concepcion fight, and a lot of the other fights-- that I didn't have the opportunity to sign the contract until the week of the fight.”
More quotes from Donaire:
On how he negotiates his fight contract
“Things like that happen in boxing, that's why we try to get on them (promoters) that 'this is what we want' in writing like a month or two before the fight, because we want to make sure that we do fight.
And that's why we're changing our style in terms of negotiating and getting them the contract beforehand like the (Fernando) Montiel fight. We were able to get the Montiel fight because for a couple of years we were trying to fight him, until we just said if I beat this guy, we want to fight Montiel, and we made it happen, because they signed the contract.”
On gaining weight
“It's freaking hard to gain weight. I don't know how people just jump up in weight and go crazy and stuff, but I'm skinny. That has a lot to do with my weight problems. Other guys are big boned, and have bigger bone mass than I do, I wish my bones had more density or mass, but I'm a skinny guy, so it's hard for me to gain weight. As much as I look like a big guy on TV, but in terms of weight, I'm small. I'm barely going to 130 after taking all these protein shakes everyday, and every night {...} eating steak."
