Abner Mares continues public call for fight with Nonito Donaire

Even though it would be a battle and ultimately a huge win just to get the fight done, Abner Mares is continuing his fight to land a bout with fellow 122-pound champion Nonito Donaire, saying that it's a fight the sport needs, and one that could help mend the fences between his promoters at Golden Boy and Donaire's at Top Rank.

"Now I'm seeing more movement on both sides. Now we've seen Oscar and Richard Schaefer talk about the possibility. Bob Arum has said it's a fight that has to be made. I'm just hoping and praying it happens. I'm just waiting to get that phone call from my manager Frank (Espinoza) saying the fight's been made. There's no frustration going on. It's more excitement at this point. ...It's a very important fight in many ways. On one hand, it's a fight the public wants to see. On the other hand, it's a fight that could save boxing and bring it back to where it was. When fighters could face each other regardless of what promotional company they're with."

Mares (25-0-1, 13 KO) may be reading too much into the promoter talk, because I've got no real feeling that a fight with Donaire is any closer to happening right now than it was a month ago, but sure, they're talking about it.

And it would be great. I don't go in for all this "saving boxing" jibber-jabber, and with all due respect to a couple of terrific fighters, Donaire vs Mares isn't going to save anything, as great a fight as it is. What it could help is the still-frigid relations between Golden Boy and Top Rank, and while you might argue that that would be a step toward "saving boxing" or whatever you might want to call it, the cynic (or realist) in me figures (or just plain knows) that before long, the two companies would have some disagreement about whose name goes first on a poster, and then it would be an outrage, and Schaefer would call Arum a dinosaur, and Arum would say Schaefer is a banker who doesn't know anything about the boxing business, and Oscar would make that face he made when Seth Mitchell got knocked down, and Todd duBoef would go, "Ah, drag, dude," and everything would go back to the miserable, grey-skied reality we now know and have been beaten into mostly just accepting.

But yeah, Donaire-Mares would be kickass, I hope they can find a way to make it happen. Let's juice a few good or great fights out of a GBP/TR truce and then go back to normal.

Donaire is scheduled to face Jorge Arce on December 15 in Houston, live on HBO.