The Incredible (Re)Emergence of Montiel

Dan Rafael traces FERNANDO MONTIEL’s amazing return to the No. 1 spot:

Montiel’s signature win, the one that put him back on many pound-for-pound lists, came last April, when, as the underdog, he traveled to Japan to face Hozumi Hasegawa, one of Asia’s most respected fighters, in a unification fight.

Hasegawa was leading on all three scorecards going into the fourth round when Montiel suddenly turned things around, catching Hasegawa and badly staggering him moments before the round ended, causing the referee to stop the fight.

With that victory, plus an impressive third-round knockout of Rafael Concepcion in a July encore, Montiel earned the biggest fight of his career, a return to HBO to face former flyweight titlist and top-10 pound-for-pound fighter NONITO DONAIRE (25-1, 17 KOs), of the Philippines.

They’ll meet in the much-anticipated main event of a “Boxing After Dark” doubleheader on Feb. 19 (HBO, 9:45 p.m. ET/PT) at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

Montiel knows it was the knockout of Hasegawa that put him in position to return to HBO for the first time in five years.

“I always believed that I was that level of fighter, one of the elite fighters, but I never had the opportunity to fight one of those type fighters,” Montiel said of Hasegawa through translator Ricardo Jimenez, a publicist for promoter Top Rank. “That opportunity was there and I took it. I showed the level that I was at. It was one of those wins that puts you at another level.

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