MOVING ON

Donnie Nietes (center) speaks in a press conference at the Summit Circle Hotel. The three-division world champion said he is ready to move on from his controversial draw against Aston Palicte. With him in the photo are Edmund Villamor (left) and Edito Villamor (right). CDN PHOTO/LITO TECSON

Confident he won against Palicte, Nietes now eyeing Gonzalez or Estrada

Donnie Nietes walked his way inside the Mactan room of the Summit Circle Hotel like a champion, despite being slapped with a controversial draw with fellow countryman Aston Palicte in their super flyweight title fight in Inglewood, California, last week.

For Nietes and his camp, they were dead sure that they won that bout and maintained that they were robbed of an opportunity for Nietes to be a world champion in a fourth weight class.

“There is no need for a rematch because even boxing fans there believe I was the one who won,” Nietes, monickered as “Ahas,” told the members of the media yesterday in his welcome-home press conference.

Now, the Negros Occidental-native’s team is ready to leave that nightmare behind and move on. The three-division champ already has a couple of possible opponents in sight for his next bout.
The names that came up were Roman Gonzalez and Juan Francisco Estrada.

“Ganahan ko makig-kontra ni (Roman) Gonzalez or ni (Juan Francisco) Estrada sunod,” the 36-year-old Nietes said. (I want to fight Roman Gonzalez or Juan Francisco Estrada next.)

But between the two, Nietes’ camp preferably wants a taste of Gonzalez, whose nickname goes by “Chocolatito.”

“’Chocolatito’ showed a good performance against (Moises) Fuentes so we hope that we’ll see a Nietes vs Gonzalez fight (soon),” Nietes’ head trainer Edito Villamor said.

Gonzalez, who is now 31 and holds a record of 47 wins (39 of which were KOs) and two losses, was a former number one pound-for-pound fighter in the world and is considered as a national gem in his home country of Nicaragua.

He lost two straight to Thailand’s Wisaksil Wangek last year before coming back strong with a fifth round technical knockout win over Fuentes last Sunday (Manila time) in an undercard of the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin fight in Las Vegas.

“There is a very big possibility because he (Gonzalez) even challenged me last time,” said Nietes.

The Mexican Estrada, meanwhile, convincingly triumphed via unanimous decision over Felipe Orucuta in his fight last week.

Regarding his fight against Palicte, Nietes admitted he got a bit challenged against his younger foe.

“His performance was okay and naglisod gyud ko gamay,” Nietes said of the 27-year-old Palicte. (I had a bit of a difficult time.) “Naghuwat gyud ko nga matumba siya pero naglisod lage ko kay taas.” (I was waiting to knock him out but I was having a difficult time because he was tall.)

Nietes believed that if given more time, he could have knocked out Palicte convincingly.

But he was already content of the fact that even though the results were not on his favor, the majority of the people, especially his fans, knew that he was the champ.