Nonito Donaire stopped Wladimir Sidorenko at 1:48 in the fourth round Saturday, earning a bantamweight title shot with a dominant performance.
In the co-feature between two Mexican opponents, Humberto Soto defeated Urbano Antillon by unanimous decision in a thrilling give-and-take fight to retain his WBC lightweight title.
Donaire (25-1, 17 KOs), a Filipino-American making his bantamweight debut, dominated Sidorenko (22-2-2, 7 KOs) from the beginning, putting the Ukrainian down three times with overwhelming power shots.
Donaire earned a chance to challenge Mexican Fernando Montiel for his bantamweight title, a bout already scheduled for Feb. 19.
Donaire hurt Sidorenko with a left hook midway through the first round, then put him down with a left hook-straight right combination. Sidorenko, his face covered in blood from a possible broken nose, went down from another left hook in the third round.
Midway through the fourth, a left-right combination sent Sidorenko to his knee and he declined to get up. The former bantamweight titleholder had never been stopped in his career.
Donaire hasn't lost since his second professional fight in March 2001. He was asked to compare this win to his sensational one-punch knockout of Vic Darchinyan in 2007 in the fight previously considered his biggest victory.
''That was just one punch,'' he said. ''This was my best performance as a fighter.''
Soto and Donaire headlined the card at in Anaheim after Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. of Mexico was forced to drop out of the main event Wednesday with a 103-degree fever. Chavez's original scheduled opponent, countryman Alfonso Gomez, dropped out last week with an injury, and Pawel Wolak of Poland was recruited to replace him before Chavez's illness.
Chavez is among Mexico's most popular fighters, but the reconfigured card drew just 3,253 fans to the Anaheim arena.
