Donaire vs. Arce on Saturday at the Toyota Center, in Houston, Texas

By Bill Phanco: WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (30-1, 19 KO’s) faces Jorge Arce (61-6-2, 46 KO’s) in a fight on Saturday night on December 15th at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. The fight will be televised by HBO, and it’s bout that a lot of Donaire’s Filipino fans and Arce’s Mexican fans are really interested in seeing. Arce’s fans think he has a real chance of winning this fight, but neutral boxing fans aren’t giving Arce much of any chance at all.

They see him as a small fighter whose best weight was light flyweight now fighting well above his best weight in going after better paydays at super bantamweight. Arce is kind of like Vic Darchinyan in that respect. Both Darchinyan and Arce were dominant at flyweight but now aren’t the same fighters after moving up to super bantamweight.

Donaire has got the height, reach, youth, and speed and power advantage over Arce. The only thing that Arce has going for him is experience and heart. Can that get him past a fighter as good as Donaire on Saturday? I’d say probably not. Theirs is a chance but it’s probably very slight.

It’s a better chance that Donaire simply blows Arce out of the ring in this fight in a brutal knockout unless Arce comes up with another injury like the one that hit him in his fight against Jesus Rojas earlier this year in a fight that wasn’t going well for Arce. He was hurt, and the fight was stopped before he could perhaps get really hurt by the younger, harder hitting Rojas. On Saturday, Arce is fighting a guy with even more power and speed than Rojas, and it just doesn’t look at all good for the 33-year-old Arce.

Arce would need a whole lot of power to win this fight, and he just doesn’t appear to have it.