The knockdown in the Naoya Inoue vs Nonito Donaire fight

I thought Donaire was actually counted out in addition to all the time he spent on his feet in obvious distress. It's weird that that relatively innocuous (relatively being the key word here) bodyshot caused so much damage when all the absolute bombs Inoue was landing to Donaire's grill seemed to just get soaked up.

 

Ref made an error, but we should let that slide. For the rest of the fight, he was near perfect. I didnt really notice him in there other than the knockdown which is a good thing. The fight just flowed and he stayed out of the way !

 

I thought he was counted out too. Seemed to still be on his knees when the count hit 10 and it didn't seem close. But I was glad that he was able to go the distance, he deserved it.

 

A bit of luck there I thought it was over because he didn't look like he wanted to get up at all.Hey, it's the refs call. No protest was made by Inoue camp. Only taint on what was a good perfomance from Donaire. Any other ref that would gave been good night, Irene. Over!

 

Eeh, I don't know about that. I mean it was good for his sense of honour to be able to finish the fight on his feet, but he took a tremendous beating in those last few rounds and didn't really come close to getting back in the fight. I don't think anyone would have questioned his heart had he been counted out (well, maybe a few d***heads would, but who cares about them?) and he would have saved himself some unnecessary punishment.

 

To be fair I think the referee thought Doniare was done, the referee was standing right next to them, he saw and heard the shot and Donaire looked genuinely sickened and he turned away, turned his face away from the action, he didn't just drop to his knees.

But yeah it was poor refereeing, he sort of jumped between them, stopped Inoue from going after Donaire and so I'm assuming he would have counted Doniare after that anyway even if Donaire didn't take a knee.

I understand the complaint but I wouldn't want those few seconds to take anything away from the fight and the performance of both men.

The referee was hardly involved during the fight because it was that clean and such a good fight, in my opinion it didn't change the outcome, it didn't have a huge effect on the fight so I'll give the referee a pass.

 

Nonito ran half a marathon before he slumped to his knees.

 

Them liver shots are no joke. Just took a knee because of one last week. I saw it coming but still had to sit my ass down. I couldn´t even talk for the next 20 or so seconds. Tried to tell the other guy that I was fine but my lungs and stomach wouldn´t work.
It literally felt like he hit me twice. I felt two punches land.
God, I hate taking live shots!

I had the exact same reaction as Donaire did. Automatically turned away from the opponent. Only Donaire stayed on his feet while I only managed 1 or 2 steps.
Castillo reacted the same to Hatton. You feel the pain, but you feel like you can still handle it. But then everything just shuts down.

 

The referee done f**cked up with that one. If Naoya was allowed to go after Nonito at thet instance he could have landed a second and maybe ever 3rd shot as we've seen in other fights when opponents got hit with one of those bodyshots. or had been forced to take the knee earlier, possibly not making it up in time that way.

At least the ref blocking him didn't affect the eventual outcome like it probably did in the Maidana vs Khan fight, where Khan could survive due to the ref blocking Maidana for a couple of seconds when out on his feet on the ropes.

Still, a great fight

 

On the sky version they showed a slow replay from a different angle, and I must say it looked like an absolute rib breaker of a shot.

 

Donaire got a long count after getting knocked down by a body shot from Inoue. That was definitely longer than 10 seconds.

 

Nonito circled in such a way that it placed the ref in between the fighters. The ref had his Back to NI and was watching what ND was doing. Don't know if he intentionally stopped NI from attacking.

 

A long count isn't that bad, unless it really is a looooooooonnnggggg... coooouuunnnttt...
In this case the blocking of Naoya before Nonito went down after being crippled by the bodyshot was though.