Image by Getty Images via @daylifeComing into the fight, Donaire and Montiel were both on the pound-for-pound list and bidding for upward mobility, but it was Donaire who bashed his way a step closer to being recognized as one of the very best fighters in the world behind Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino countryman he idolizes.
With the booming knockout, Donaire won a title in a third weight class and gave the Philippines another victory in its burgeoning boxing rivalry with Mexico. Donaire was a longtime flyweight champion -- the same division where Pacquiao began his historic run -- and also had won an interim junior bantamweight belt.
But he had outgrown the 115-pound division and moved up to bantamweight in December, where he crushed former titlist Wladimir Sidorenko in four rounds to send a message to the division.
He sent another one against Montiel, who wound up in the hospital as a precaution after such a thudding knockout.
"I knew we both had the punching power to knock each other out," Montiel said. "I made the first mistake and I paid for it."
Did he ever. But Donaire said it was no surprise to him. He said that he had envisioned a second-round knockout.
"I told [trainer] Robert Garcia in camp before Christmas it would be a second-round knockout. I had a premonition," Donaire said.
That's exactly what he got.
"It was the speed. That was my main key. The openings he gave me was all I needed," said Donaire, a native of the Philippines who moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was 10.
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