Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: There’s a 40-something Filipino great making a comeback in pursuit of an alphabet belt after an extended stretch of time off following a deflating decision loss that showed his age.

One boxer who fits that lengthy description just went into the International Boxing Hall of Fame this past weekend.

Nonito Donaire could have been Hall-eligible two ballots from now, but just like Manny Pacquiao, “The Filipino Flash” arrived this spring at the decision that he still has some fight left in him. (At least in his head and his heart. Whether his body has any fight left in it will be known soon enough.)

Pacquiao was “retired” from boxing for more than three years, and therefore qualified for a spot on the Hall of Fame ballot last fall, and was, of course, voted in the first time his name appeared on that ballot. Then he proceeded to confirm the long-circulating rumors that he would be challenging Mario Barrios for a welterweight alphabet strap on July 19. He made his visit to Canastota last weekend to take his place among the immortals of the sport, and 41 days post-induction, he fights again.

“Pac-Man” is, understandably, sucking up about 99% of the oxygen available for middle-aged Filipino fighting icons doing the comeback thing. Between the Hall of Fame induction, his particularly advanced age (46), the fact that he’s going straight into a title fight, the fact that it tops a pay-per-view event, and, well, the fact that he’s Manny Freaking Pacquiao, he’s generating constant news headlines, opinion pieces, podcast rants, and so on.

As for Donaire? I’m a paid member of the boxing media, and I didn’t realize he had a fight scheduled until a few days ago.

There are good reasons for that, besides the simple explanation that “he isn’t Manny Freaking Pacquiao.”

Donaire has been inactive 23 months, compared to 47 for Pacquiao, making it a less dramatic return. Donaire is a relative pup at 42 years old. Donaire is facing an almost anonymous opponent in Andres Campos, and as of now it has no television carrier in the U.S. And their bout is for an interim alphabet title, not a full title, for whatever such distinctions are worth.

The titles may be of slightly different caliber, but the open displays of rankings fraudulence are in perfect lockstep.

Pacquiao needed a ranking in order to challenge for the WBC welterweight belt. Pacquiao hadn’t competed in nearly four years. Pacquiao was installed as the number-five contender in the WBC’s welterweight rankings.

In December, Donaire attended the rankings meeting at the WBA convention in Orlando. Donaire announced he planned to fight again, at bantamweight. “I request to be in the top five so I can have another chance at the title,” he said. Donaire, who has not fought in almost two years, was installed as the number-five contender in the WBA’s bantamweight rankings.

Funny how that works.

There is further alphabet muck to sift through: Seiya Tsutsumi held the WBA bantamweight belt, and Antonio Vargas the interim belt, until three weeks ago, when Tsutsumi was downgraded to “champion in recess,” allowing Vargas to be elevated to the full title. That made the interim title vacant, and even though there is no logical reason to have an interim title now with Vargas standing as a theoretically active champion, what do you know, Donaire and Campos are meeting to fill the interim vacancy.

(To paraphrase Jim Downey’s character in “Billy Madison,” you are all now dumber for having read that paragraph.)

The result of all this is that Saturday, as part of the WBA’s annual KO to Drugs festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Donaire will face the Chilean Campos for a version of a bantamweight belt.

It’s going about as under-the-radar as a 42-year-old future Hall of Famer coming out of what everyone assumed was retirement could, but maybe that’s for the best.

If it turns out Donaire is all the way gone, if he’s going to lose to a complete unknown, it may as well happen off our airwaves, the sadness available only to those hardcore fans going well out of their way to seek it out.

The 28-year-old Campos sports a record of 17-2-1 (6 KOs), and he’s perhaps even a more ordinary fighter than those numbers make him sound. He’s not especially fast, he doesn’t hit terribly hard, he isn’t particularly light on his feet, and he’s moving up from 115lbs (but is, ever so conveniently, featured already in the WBA’s bantamweight top 10).

Campos is particularly vulnerable to the left hook, which just happens to be Donaire’s best punch. That was the punch that got the Chilean last October, when middling Joselito Velazquez stopped him in the sixth round in Cancun, Mexico. Before that, Campos fought to a draw with 12-3-2 Edinson Martinez. Two fights prior, in a flyweight title challenge, Campos lost a unanimous decision to Sunny Edwards.

As for Campos’ 17 wins, there really aren’t any to brag about. A decision on March 14, 2020, just as the world was shutting down due to Covid, over 12-0 Pedro Villegas probably qualifies as Campos’ best result.

The point is: He isn’t a Mario Barrios-level fighter. If Donaire can’t handle Campos, that should signify the end of this Donaire comeback.

There’s no reason to expect, though, that Donaire will lose. He’s a faded fighter, but at least at last look, he wasn’t that faded. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that he was still a force. Shortly after his 39th birthday, he stopped Reymart Gaballo in the fourth round atop a “Showtime Championship Boxing” card. As of that moment, The Filipino Flash was plausibly elite.

Then he got destroyed in two rounds in his rematch with Naoya Inoue – which didn’t necessarily indicate anything about Donaire’s slippage, as bad things tend to happen when people step into the ring with prime Inoue.

But the next fight was the eye-opener. On the Terence Crawford-Errol Spence undercard in Las Vegas on July 29, 2023, a full 16 years on from Donaire’s explosive first title win over Vic Darchinyan, he lost a competitive but clear-cut unanimous decision to Alexandro Santiago, a proficient, diminutive Mexican contender who was no pushover – but surely would have been pushed over by a prime Donaire.

Santiago has gone 0-2 since. Donaire has not fought. 

Donaire, 40 years old at the time, no longer had the look of a championship-level fighter, but he didn’t announce his retirement following the Santiago defeat. Many of us assumed he was saying an Irish goodbye. But his occasional quotes indicated otherwise.

He toyed with a battle of future Hall of Famers against Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez. He spoke occasionally of an itch to fight again, and that itch went from bug-bite level to the full-body-rash realm when he watched the stirring Inoue vs. Ramon Cardenas scrap last month.

If Donaire defeats Campos, next could be Vargas for a title without an “interim” designation, possibly after Donaire has turned 43.

Such is the lure of title belts.

As observers, we may be offended by the way the belts multiply like wet Mogwai, by the way organizations strip fighters who lack proper connections, and by the way inactive boxers with big names can pop up at number five in the rankings as just one more sign of the post-shame society in which we apparently live.

But the fighters want those damned belts anyway. The Flash vs. Chocolatito would have been a comeback fight with actual appeal for the fans. Donaire vs. Campos, apparently, is what holds appeal for a 42-year-old great who has won and lost more full titles and interim titles across a 42-8 (28 KOs) career than anyone can keep track of.

It’s all going down in the shadow of Pacquiao, who has held even more titles than Donaire in even more weight classes than Donaire and has the same number of losses, but boasts 20 more victories and 11 more KOs.

For Donaire, there’s no topping the fanfare of Pacquiao’s comeback. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with being the second-most noteworthy 40-something Filipino great making a comeback in pursuit of an alphabet belt after an extended stretch of time off following a deflating decision loss that showed his age.

Especially when, unlike 3-to-1 underdog Pacquiao, the odds suggest you should win your comeback fight.

If Donaire can’t get it done against Campos, however, then please, Nonito – let this be the last time you reset your Hall of Fame clock.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of and the author of 2014’s . He can be reached on , , or , or via email at [email protected].