Video: Donaire vs Concepcion

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<-- Watch here as Nonito Donaire squares off with Rafael Concepcion for the super flyweight championship.

When Nonito Donaire fights Panama’s Rafael Concepcion in Las Vegas on Saturday, the recent IBF flyweight champion will take the next step toward an American dream he started as a picked-upon 10-year-old in the Philippine province of Bohol.

After moving with his family from the Philippines to the working-class East Bay suburb of San Leandro, California, Nonito took the opportunity to reinvent himself. He decided to fight.

“I was a little snotty-nosed, big-eared kid who didn’t believe that there was a tomorrow for me, and look where I am now,” Donaire said while wrapping his hands before a recent workout.

Donaire (21-1, 14 KOs) has progressed up the list of the world’s top pound-for-pound boxers while winning his last 20 fights. His fame is still in its nascent stages, both in his adopted home and back in the Philippines, yet his headlining spot atop the “Pinoy Power” card at the Hard Rock suggests promoter Top Rank expects the Filipino Flash to get a whole lot bigger.