One More Shot at the Big Time Awaits the Winner of Nietes vs Waseem on Saturday

A perfect, strange fight is scheduled to take place in the bantamweight division this Saturday in Dubai. Available on FITE TV and broadcast in the middle of the afternoon in the UK and early in the morning for America, it is one for the Sweet Scientists among us. The major attraction, I suggest, is not the inexplicable headliner to be fought between Hector Andres Sosa and James Dickens, but the chief support – the talented Muhammad Waseem squaring off against the veteran Donnie Nietes, boxing far from home for a minor strap and a future in a sport that has all but used them up.

Waseem, The Falcon, never quite landed. A hero in Pakistan, he seemed destined to put his country on the boxing map after repeatedly medalling as an amateur. A promising beginning saw him challenge for world titles twice at 112lbs; Waseem failed on both occasions. Nietes, on the other hand, is past-prime. A wonderful fighter, he has held high rankings in multiple divisions but he has not won a significant fight since 2018 – although that narrow triumph over the mighty Kazuto Ioka was a fabulous victory.

Ioka avenged the defeat by a wide unanimous decision in the summer of 2022 and it seemed that this might be all from the unsung Filipino.

Instead, he meets Waseem, and the winner shall emerge with a minor alphabet title at the weight and no small amount of leverage. It is a resurrection of sorts and for all that Nietes (pictured) has fallen the further, Waseem is every bit as much in need of a sporting rebirth. Quick-handed and organised, he was also a huge flyweight and one that looked superb in out-pointing Nietes’ countryman Giemel Magramo in 2016. In 2017 though, Waseem bizarrely returned to treading water, moving out of twelve round competition and back in to six and eight round matches against professional losers. What it all meant was that he was ill-prepared for his 2018 shot at a strap against storied veteran Moruti Mthalane.

Waseem-Mthalane took place in 2015 but remains the key fight in handicapping Waseem-Nietes. Mthalane was much older but streets craftier – the question in their contest was whether the bigger, quicker, younger man could overcome the wily campaigner out for the latest in a long line of alphabet titles. These questions are the same as those that will be answered this Saturday in Dubai Studio City. On that occasion, Waseem came up short, but it was an intriguing fight. Mthalane had all the control early. Waseem looked planless, like a fighter who had been told that the way to shed his amateur style was to visit the trenches, but this essentially meant he was thoroughly outfought while failing to use either his reach or size advantage. Still, that size may have worn Mthalane who suffered badly late in the fight, even visiting the canvas in the eleventh after a square, aggressive Waseem pinned him to the ropes. It would be an exaggeration to call this a near miss, but had this much more aggressive Waseem materialised a few rounds earlier, it would have been exactly that.

Travelling between Lahore and Dubai, Waseem again inexplicably returned to shortform boxing and questionable opposition and around this time, I lost interest in him – only for him to box for a title once more, this time against divisional number one Sunny Edwards. Edwards was far too good for Waseem, but just like the Mthalane fight, he showed flashes of promise.

Promise can only carry a fighter so far, however, and Waseem was somehow thirty-four years old at this point. When he vanished for a year, it seemed he might have hung up his gloves.

So, his date with Nietes came as something of a surprise, and at bantamweight no less. Waseem has the advantage here and he even fought at the weight limit during his inexplicable 2017 rummage through journeyman hell. But it is not the weight class he fought for titles at, nor is it a division in which he will hold a meaningful size advantage over the average contender. This is probably why Nietes has been selected as an opponent. Donnie Nietes is a fighter I could talk about all day. Having turned professional in 2003, he has been boxing for two decades and is about to enter his fifth weight class, but at 5’3” he is small for even a flyweight and will be a tiny bantamweight. This has never stopped him making a vivid impression on his opponents, though. Nietes has a deep well of tactical attack, he is the type of fighter who makes small strategic adjustments for big differences in the ring, a left-hooker at heart, he changed this punch out for right hands to lift his 108lb strap against southpaw Ramon Garcia (having already dropped one unbeaten at 105lbs). Seven years later in his wonderful first fight with Kazuto Ioka, he counteracted Ioka’s super one-two combination with a weak but quick scoring jab and by subtly moving the fight to the inside where he edged his foe. Moises Fuentes baffled him to a draw in 2013 but Nietes seemed a different man in the rematch, dirty and direct, stopping his man with a right-hand behind a beautifully feinted left.

A near-genius, Nietes travelled both the weight-classes and the world in search of money and recognition, achieved a modicum of both before starting, finally, to slip in the early 2020s. Subjected to a robbery draw against Aston Palicte in 2018, he suffered the real thing against Norbelto Jimenez in 2021. I thought Nietes did barely enough, but this was no robbery. He appeared uncertain at times against a fighter who he would have buried even two years earlier. When Ioka turned his old foe around with such ease in June last year it was clear that Nietes was past it and at forty, perhaps finished with the sport.

Sweet Science readers can see then why these two are made for each other.

I will be cheering for Donnie Nietes and there is no real reason he cannot get it done. It is true he is the older man but at six years, the difference is not prohibitive; it is true he is the smaller man, but that has been the case since about 2016 and it really has not made a meaningful difference. Still, unless he loses the battle of the jabs despite his length and speed, I think Waseem will get the job done. Aggressive, and capable of weaving together swift punches out of a reasonably adaptable stance, Waseem will get home for a win on points.  Nietes needs a fast start to take the prize because one of boxing’s best engines has begun to sputter of late.

Still, if he is in the fight as the tenth and eleventh wind down, Nietes may just find a way. Up to bat for the fifty-third time, it is impossible to believe that Waseem will be able to show Nietes anything he has not seen before.

Waseem, the man who reached for potential super-stardom but never made it, thirty-five years old, 12-2, still very much the athlete, the man with the physical advantages. In the other corner, Nietes, brilliant, has seen the likes of Waseem many times before, but perhaps unable to pull the trigger now against a quicker opponent, perhaps unable to position himself as he did before to avoid the hurtful blows from a sport that is harder on veterans than any other.

Each is the other’s worst nightmare stylistically, and each is the other’s only chance at one more shot at the big time. It is a perfectly balanced fight, taking place in a fistically unfashionable part of the world at a strange time of the day but I submit it should not be missed, certainly not by anybody who has read this far.

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