Nonito Donaire made quick work of Jorge Arce on Saturday night at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. The Filipino Flash scored a 3rd round KO victory over the Mexican legend, and while nearly everyone expected Donaire to close the show in spectacular fashion, few thought it would be this easy.
Despite the fact that Arce out-weighed Donaire on fight night by a decent margin, when you saw these two guys in the ring standing next to each other, Donaire was clearly the bigger, stronger guy. When you add in youth, athleticism, speed and everything else that Donaire brings to the table, and Arce was simply overmatched.
Donaire vs. Arce Photos
Arce went down once in Round 2, with his gloves touching the canvas after being stunned. In Round 3, a shot to the side of his head began the trouble, and he was never able to recover. He went down, and after being sent down a second time, that was fight, and the action was called off as he lay on the canvas and spit out his mouthpiece.
After the fight, Arce said that he was retiring from the sport, and he seemed quite content and set on that. He isn’t the only person who’s leaving the sport from tonight’s HBO card, as it was Larry Merchant’s last time calling fights from ringside after 35 years.
Meanwhile, Nonito Donaire told Merchant in his post-fight interview, that he wants both Abner Mares and Guillermo Rigondeaux, but if he had to choose, he’d like to fight Mares the most.
[We currently rank Donaire as #4 pound for pound, Mares #6 and Rigondeaux #16].
So it’s been a night of endings, of chapters coming to a close. Merchant saying goodbye, Arce retiring, and re-watching the Pacquiao-Marquez knockout from last week. In the midst of that, Donaire reasserted himself as a central figure of the next wave of boxing’s headline figures, the present and the future.
The Donaire vs. Arce results certainly weren’t unexpected, but it was indeed surprising to see Donaire get the job done so quickly, on a night of transitions and change in the world of boxing.
