Nonito Donaire doesn’t regret the aggressive approach that led to his devastating defeat to Naoya Inoue in their rematch 13 months ago.

Donaire tried to take out “The Monster” early in their second bout. The Japanese knockout artist instead dropped Donaire in the first round and again during the second round.

Referee Michael Griffin declared Donaire unfit to continue once the four-division champion got up from another Inoue left hook in June 2022 at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan.

“The Filipino Flash” lost by knockout for only the second time in his 20-year professional career and squandered his shot at redemption in unforeseen fashion. The 40-year-old Donaire reflected on his second loss to Inoue during an interview with BoxingScene.com in advance of his WBC bantamweight title fight against Alexandro Santiago on Saturday night in Las Vegas.

“I gambled,” Donaire said. “I gambled to tear his head off and I got my head [torn] off. That’s how it was. I mean, it wasn’t gonna be a chess match. I wasn’t gonna win a decision. You know, so for me, it was just go all out. Whether I get hit or whether I take him, for me, I’m not afraid to go down. So, for me, I’d rather choose to go for broke and go for that [knockout], whether it’s gonna be successful or not.

“Most of the time, I’m successful. Unfortunately, that time I wasn’t. And I learned a lot from it, so it wasn’t too much of a mental stress for me. I mean, it was for a couple hours until I realized, ‘You know what? I went out there and I went and tried to give it all I got.’ And [at] this level, any mistake you pay dearly for.”

Inoue (24-0, 21 KOs) became boxing’s first fully unified bantamweight champion of the four-belt era in his next bout, an 11th-round knockout of England’s Paul Butler (34-3, 15 KOs) on December 13 at Ariake Arena in Tokyo. The 30-year-old Inoue is widely viewed as one of the top three boxers, pound-for-pound, in the sport, though that hasn’t made his loss easier for Donaire to accept.

“A loss is a loss to me,” said Donaire, whose 12-round, unanimous-decision defeat to Inoue in November 2019 was voted “Fight of the Year” by numerous outlets. “I don’t really look at it like [I lost to] one of the best guys. I mean, I came in there thinking I was gonna win the fight, you know, and I got caught with a punch that I didn’t see and I went down. You know, so it’s just more of the fact for me that, you know, that he was a good fighter and if we can dance again I would love to dance again. But I gotta line myself up for that.”

Inoue vacated his IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO bantamweight titles to challenge Philadelphia’s Stephen Fulton (21-0, 8 KOs) for Fulton’s WBC and WBO 122-pound championships July 25 at Ariake Arena (ESPN+).

Las Vegas’ Donaire (42-7, 28 KOs) and Mexico’s Santiago (27-3-5, 14 KOs) will fight for the vacant WBC belt in the 12-round co-feature of a “Showtime Championship Boxing” tripleheader at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

Unbeaten lightweight contender Frank Martin (17-0, 12 KOs), a Detroit native, will meet Armenia’s Artem Harutyunyan (12-0, 7 KOs) in Showtime’s 12-round main event. This three-bout broadcast is scheduled to start at 10 p.m. EDT (7 p.m. PDT) with a 10-round junior welterweight bout between Dominican southpaw Elvis Rodriguez (14-1-1, 12 KOs) and Ukraine’s Viktor Postol (31-4, 12 KOs), a former WBC super lightweight champion.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.