Nonito Donaire vs Cristian Mijares: July 7 at Home Depot Center

The date of Nonito Donaire's next fight has apparently changed again, from July 14 to July 21 and now back to July 7, as Bob Arum says that Donaire will face Cristian Mijares at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., on that date.

HBO is reportedly discussing the fight with Top Rank's Todd duBoef. Hopefully, it's not bought as a main event, but even more hopefully, HBO doesn't also buy an Antonio Margarito fight to pair with it, as Margarito's middleweight debut is also now slated for July 7.

But don't count any of that out: It could be a Boxing After Dark, which is what they call fights Jim Lampley doesn't attend now (it's not about young stars or anything like that), and Margarito could eventually face Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, and HBO would have to air that since they're in the Chavez business now, so they might as well show Margarito potentially winning a fight instead of going, "Chavez vs Margarito! What a fight!" when the last two times we saw Margarito associated with HBO, he got the crap beaten out of him.

I've said before that I don't think much of Donaire vs Mijares, and it certainly won't tell me anything new about Donaire as a super bantamweight, since Mijares is really a super flyweight. It's a big sideways step, really, sort of a safety-first matchup that won't test Donaire in all likelihood. It's kind of hard to figure out what HBO is doing with Donaire right now if they pick this fight up as expected, since they feature nobody else in the division or even at featherweight, given that Yuriorkis Gamboa is now on the shelf for the foreseeable future.