Donaire-Rigondeaux: Tension builds in Houston rift!

By Jack Price @PriceyJ97.

There has always been a bit of animosity between super-bantamweights Nonito Donaire and Guillermo Rigondeaux, but the tension rose last weekend when the two camps were involved in an altercation just hours after Donaire's 3rd round stoppage victory over Jorge Arce.

Both camps were staying at the Hyatt Hotel and according to witnesses DJ Montacordoba, strength and conditioning coach for Team Rigondeaux, got into an aggressive argument with a female member of Donaire's entourage just a few hours after the fight. This infuriated Donaire and the Filipino decided to hit up Rigondeaux's room. 

"I don't really care if people talk shit about me, that's fine with me, but if you're going to talk sh*t to a person that cares for me, especially to a woman, if you're going to talk sh*t to a woman like that and disrespect her, I can't have that," Donaire told Dennis Guillermo of boxingscene.com. "I don't want people to disrespect other people who have nothing to do with me in terms of fighting, especially a woman."

The 'Filipino Flash' then went on to talk about how he personally searched for Rigondeaux's room and addressed them on the situation.

"I called him up and told them if you're going to talk sh*t, talk sh*t to my face. If you're going to disrespect me, don't expect me to respect you guys," he added. "I was telling them I wanted to talk to Rigondeaucx, I wanted to talk to DJ (Montacordoba), I want to talk with whoever that speaks English... They were passing the phone and his coach said 'its okay, its okay, I'm going to calm them down, its just that they were drinking, we understand,' pretty much sucking up to me."

Donaire and Rigondeaux seem set on a unification bout sometime in 2013. If things like this continue to happen then we may see it happen sooner rather than later.