Arum mulls pitting Donaire vs WBO featherweight champ Valdez

MANILA, Philippines – Nonito Donaire Jr. may see himself getting a lucky break next year with another opportunity to win a world title.

This after Top Rank Inc. chief Bob Arum, Donaire’s promoter, said he plans to arrange a fight between the Filipino-American and undefeated knockout artist Oscar Valdez.

Valdez (21-0, with 19 KOs), a dangerous 26-year-old fighter from Mexico, holds the WBO featherweight title and should be a tough assignment for the ageing Donaire.

But Arum likes the matchup.

“That's a great fight for Donaire and it's a fight that we look to make for the first three months of the year,” the veteran promoter recently told US boxing scribe Steve Kim of boxingscene.com

Valdez last saw action in the undercard of Manny Pacquiao’s fight with Jessie Vargas last November, impressing the crowd by stopping Japanese challenger Hiroshige Osawa in seven rounds.

Donaire, for his part, lost the WBO super bantamweight championship to Diego Magdaleno in the same Las Vegas fight card. He yielded the crown via a unanimous decision, a result which he disputed afterward.

Now, Donaire may get a chance to redeem himself against Valdez, if the fight materializes.

“It would be Donaire at 126 against Oscar Valdez,” Arum added.

The 34-year-old Donaire (37-4, with 24 KOs) is no stranger in fighting at featherweight (126 pounds), even becoming the division’s WBA champion when he dethroned Simpiwe Vetyeka two years ago in Macau.

But he his reign as WBA featherweight champion did not last long when he got knocked out by a bigger and more powerful Nicholas Walters in the same year.