When Nonito Donaire was tapped to face Vic Darchinyan, the fearsome Australian-Armenian for the International Boxing Federation (IBF) flyweight throne last year in Connecticut, it was universally thought Darchinyan would bowl over him with ease.

But Donaire put on a stunning performance, executing a stunning fifth-round knockout of the seemingly-invincible Darchinyan and taking away the IBF belt in the process.

Donaire sees a parallelism between him and David Diaz, the obscure Chicago native who meets Manny Pacquiao on Saturday at Mandalay Bay.

“You just don’t take away the hunger of a person and you saw me when I fought Vic Darchinyan and people put me down and they said I was a sacrificial lamb and all that stuff,” said Donaire on Thursday after a press conference that Top Rank held to formally announced that he is now with the Bob Arum-owned promotional company.

“A hungry fighter is a dangerous fighter. When you fight a hungry fighter, you better be careful because it’s do or die and despite the fact that he knows he is not as fast as Pacquiao and not as strong as Pacquiao, he knows he has to give it all and that alone is a dangerous fighter.”

Pacquiao is the heavy favorite going into the scheduled 12-rounder and most experts predict that the Filipino’s huge advantage in speed will be too much for the usually flatfooted Diaz to overcome.