Los Mochis, Sinaloa – Fernando “Kochulito” Montiel believes that his next fight is the most important of his career and that is why he must win. Montiel, who is working extremely hard in his native city of Los Mochis, is looking to put together the best training camp possible that will give him the perfect fight when he takes on Nonito “The Filipino Flash” Donaire Saturday, Feb. 19 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. Promoted by Top Rank and Zanfer Promotions, the championship bout will be televised on HBO® at 9:45 p.m. ET/PT.
Montiel (44-2-2, 34 KOs) of Los Mochis, Mexico, is training under the guidance of his father, Manuel, and his brothers, Pedro, Manuel Jr., and Eduardo. For this fight they have also hired Lorenzo and German Garza as physical trainers to increase his power without losing his speed.
“I know this is a very dangerous fight and is important to work on everything, so we don’t make any mistakes. With less than 20 days to go we are working on speed to be as quick and as fast as I can be,” said Montiel, who will defend his World Boxing Council (WBC) and World Boxing Organization bantamweight championship against Donaire.
Montiel, 31, who is a three-time world champion with more than 20 world championship fights and is considered one of the best Mexican boxers of all-time, knows that a victory over Donaire (25-0-1, 17 KOs) of General Santos City, Filipinas will put an exclamation point on his already brilliant career.
TRAINING AT HOME
Montiel begins his day with a 50-minute run in the huge Parque Centenario in Los Mochis, at 1:00 p.m. he is at the gym his family owns, where he will spar and do all of his boxing workouts, including 700 sit-ups, and closes out his day with a night session in the same gym with the Garza Brothers, where he does special exercises geared towards giving him the best physical condition possible for this most important fight.
“I feel great and I believe that that the work plan my father and brothers have put together has been very effective and with the addition of the Garza brothers, I will be in the best shape ever for a fight. I want to give the fans a fight they will remember for a long time and I want to give the Mexican people a win that they will proud off and I will promise them a victory,” said Montiel, who has won the 112, 115 (twice) and 118 WBO world titles and is the WBC 118-pound king.
His brother Eduardo Montiel, the chief second in the corner for this fight, wants his younger brother to put a lot of pressure on Donaire and does not want him to fight at a distance against the taller and longer Filipino.
“Donaire is a tremendous counter-puncher who will use his speed to try to stay out of Fernando’s power zone and that is why we are making sure that Fernando understands that in order to win this fight he needs to put pressure on his opponent and throw a lot of punches. We want him to be in such great shape so that he can throw punches from the start to the end of each round,” said Eduardo Montiel.
For the first phase of his training Montiel sparred with Jorge Lacierva, Tomoki Kameda and Alex Lopez, and for the speed phase with Eduardo Ramirez and Ariel Gaspar.
Montiel is undefeated when he trains at home in Los Mochis. The only two times he trained outside of his hometown he lost to Mark Johnson and Johnny Gonzalez in very close decisions. This time he is not breaking his winning routine.