NONITO Donaire, Jr successfully defended his WBC bantamweight crown via a fourth-round stoppage of fellow Filipino challenger Reymart Gaballo under the lights of Carson, California ring on December 11 (yesterday afternoon, PH time).
The much younger Gaballo, 25, tried to beat the mandatory eight counts as he struggled to stand up only to fall back on his knees in pain after absorbing the notorious left hook from Donaire to the ribs.
And like when he aided his countryman, interpreting what he meant during the pre-fight interviews in the US, Donaire quickly helped out Gaballo who stayed longer on the floor, unable to rise again from the lethal hit, as he grimaced for the first knockout defeat in his young boxing career.
Before facing the interim champion Gaballo, who’s now 24-one, Donaire gamely shared that he has a bigger goal which is to possibly collect all the belts in the 118 pounds, including a rematch with WBA, IBF, and Ring Magazine champion Naoya Inoue of Japan and a collision with another Filipino in the flamboyant WBO titleholder Casimero.
Fighting for nearly 20 years, Donaire now has a 42-six win-loss record, including 28 knockouts as he turned back the time anew since he destroyed French champion Nordine Oubaali, also in the fourth round, in taking the WBC bantamweight belt.
Meanwhile, Filipino Marlon Tapales emerged triumphant in one of the undercard bouts.
Tapales floored Japanese Hiroaki Teshigawara three times en route to a second-round knockout finish in their IBF junior featherweight world title elimination face-off.
The 29-year-old Tapales, erstwhile holder of the WBO bantamweight title who came from a long lay-off, improves to 35-three, with 18 knockouts.
Tapales won 14 of his last 15 fights with the streak tainted by a knockout loss to Ryosuke Iwasa of Japan in December 2019.
