Donaire flattens Young, keeps WBA bantam title

STOCKTON, California — Nonito Donaire sent a strong message to the bantamweight bigwigs Saturday when he flattened last-minute replacement Stephon Young of the US with a thunderous left hook in the sixth round to retain his World Boxing Association (WBA) 118-lb crown in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Donaire was supposed to

battle Zolani Tete of South Africa in the semifinal round of the World Boxing Super Series (WBSS), a special tournament involving the world’s finest bantams.

But Tete suffered a shoulder injury, forcing Young to step in as a substitute and get to fight in the main event instead of the undercard where he was supposed to see action.

The win shoved Donaire into the finals of the WBSS against the winner of the other semis pairing on May 18 featuring Japan’s Naoya Inoue and Emmanuel Rodriguez of Puerto Rico.

The referee didn’t even bother to count as Young (18-2-3 with seven KOs) was out cold even before his head hit the floor.

Donaire (40-5-2 with 26 KOs) was visibly concerned over Young’s fate and he came over to check on his fallen foe’s condition while doctors attended to him.

Young, who took the fight on three days’ notice, was down for about a minute before being allowed to get on his feet.

Donaire moves up to 40-5 with 26 knockouts and will face either Naoya Inoue or Emmanuel Rodriguez in WBSS final.

Inoue and Rodriguez will square off in the other semifinal match on May 19 in Glasgow with the WBA regular and the International Boxing Federation belts to be unified in the process.

Young, a late replacement for the injured Zolani Tete, fell to 18-2-3.

Before winning the WBA bantam belt, Donaire had won world titles at fly, super-bantam, and feather. At one point, Donaire, 36, had also won an interim world title at super-fly.

With his victory last Saturday, Donaire remained in the company of three other Filipino world champions in Manny Pacquiao, Jerwin Ancajas, and Vic Saludar.

Meanwhile, the remaining days of Jerwin Ancajas’ training won’t be so much on heavy stuff but instead focused on mastering the game plan needed for a targeted show of supremacy on May 4.

Exactly a week before he meets mandatory Japanese challenger Ryuichi Funai in the seventh defense of his International Boxing Federation (IBF) super-flyweight, Ancajas and chief trainer Joven Jimenez discussed the finer points of their strategy.

Ancajas said all the hard work — almost eight weeks holed out at the Philippine Marines Base Camp in Ternate, Cavite, in the Philippines – is finished.

“Maintain-maintain na lang ng kundisyon sa darating na mga araw (We’ll just have to maintain our current condition in the coming days),” said Ancajas, who doesn’t see any trouble making the division limit of 115 lbs on May 3, the eve of the fight at the Stockton Arena.

Last year, the southpaw Ancajas defended the title thrice, winning twice, and drawing once.

Against Funai on May 4, Ancajas wants to erase the stigma of the last fight that ended in a draw against Alejandro Santiago of Mexico.

No less than a KO win is what Ancajas and his team are looking at.