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Donaire, Gaballo make weight, dispute WBC bantam belt

Sports | Boxing

Donaire, Gaballo make weight, dispute WBC bantam belt

By Carlo Anolin

Reigning WBC bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire and Reymart Gaballo made their weight ahead of their title bout on Saturday, Dec. 11 (Sunday in Manila) at the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.

(Photo from Showtime)

Donaire weighed in at 117.2 lbs while Gaballo registered 117 lbs.

"I've done this so many times that all I could think about now is I can eat," Donaire jested during the weigh-in Friday, Dec. 10. "And I'm happy but going into this fight. I'm just very confident. I've done this so many times and going back into it, the butterflies is more of excitement but to me it's like another day tomorrow."

The "Filipino Flash" is also positive that their team has prepared the right strategies against Gaballo, who remained undefeated in 24 matches with 20 knockouts.

For Donaire, there is no room for complacency against a young and hungry fighter in Gaballo but he's more than ready to "impose my will" in the ring.

"We've done our strategies well so we're very well confident to execute those strategies and come out victorious and we don't wanna take anything away from him and look past him," added the 39-year-old four-division world champion.

Donaire captured the WBC bantamweight title after knocking out Frenchman Nordine Oubaali last May.

This also marks Donaire's first match against a fellow Filipino since scoring a technical knockout win over Mark Sales way back in November 2002.

The 25 year-old Gaballo, for his part, just kept his focus on the match to fulfill his long-time dream of becoming a world champion.

"Anything can happen but I'm just focused on the fight. That's it," said Gaballo. " very good fight because I trained really, really hard for this fight."

Related Tags

Nonito Donaire WBC Reymart Gaballo World Boxing Council

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