This past week has been relatively quiet in Asian boxing, but there has been a number of fights of note.
March 22nd-
The first of those numerous bouts was on Wednesday when Japanese fans saw veteran Ryuichi Funai (27-7, 19) score a 7th round KO win over old High School friend Kenta Nakagawa (13-3-1, 9) to claim the Japanese Super Flyweight title. The fight was Nakagawa’s first defense of the title and sadly for him his vaunted power was never enough to budge Funai who eventually wore him down, stopping him at the very end of round 7. With the win Funai claims his first title, in his third shot, but the future doesn’t look so clear for Nakagawa, who is now said to be considering retirement.
Interestingly the win for Funai sees the Watanabe gym netting another title. In fact in the space of 3 months the Gym has netted the WBO Asia Pacific Lightweight title, the OPBF Minimumweight title and now the Japanese Super Flyweight title.
March 23rd-
On Thursday night Kazakh prospect Aidos Yerbossynuly (5-0, 5) made his US debut and scored a 2nd round TKO win over Riarus Dudley (5-2-1, 2). The Kazakh had fought in Ukraine and Kazakhstan before this, but this but this was his first outing in the US and the Middleweight did impress, stopping a man who had never previously been stopped.
March 25th-
The day with the most notable action was Saturday, as fans in Singapore got a really notable show.
In the main event of the show fans saw Uzbek puncher Qudratillo Abduqaxorov (11-0, 8) score a very surprising opening round win over Zimbabwe’s Charles Manyuchi (20-3-1, 12) to claim the WBC “Silver” Welterweight title. On paper the bout looked like a huge step up for the unbeaten Uzbek, but Manyuchi decided to try and clown in the early stages, before being tagged hard and dropped. Manyuchi did recover to his feet, but was dropped for a second time soon afterwards and the referee instantly waved off the bout.
Another Uzbek picking up a win here was the very highly regarded Azizbek Abdugofurov (6-0, 4), who scored a 10 round unanimous decision over Argentina’s Martin Fidel Rios (21-11-4, 11). Although Abdugofurov has now gone the distance in back-to-back fights he is moving up the rankings and a win over Rios is a very solid win, especially given the trouble Rios has given numerous other good fighters.
Highly regarded Indonesian Daud Yordan (37-3-0-1, 25) kept his hopes of another world title fight alive as he made light work of Thailand’s Campee Phayom (11-3, 7), who was stopped in round 2. Yordan, the biggest name in Indonesian boxing following the retirement of Chris John, has now won 7 in a row and is said to be chasing a world title fight at 140lbs.
Another notable, and more competitive, bout saw Jeson Umbal (14-5, 9) take a 10 round split decision win over Fadhili Majiha (20-8-4, 9). Umbal was 8-5 (6) just 11 months ago but has reeled off some good wins recently and beating Majiha here was the next step there. It should be noted though that a local judge had this bout scored 96-97, apparently, a very peculiar score card.
March 26th-
The weekend ended with another win for super talented Japanese youngster Hinata Maruta (5-0, 4), who successfully defended his WBC Youth Bantamweight title for the second titme. The talented Japanese sensation took out Indonesian Hamson Tiger Lamandau (8-1, 5) in the 7th round, with body shots, to record a 4th straight stoppage and he is now targetting a July bout for either a Japanese or OPBF title.
Sadly it wasn’t a successful day for Maruta’s stablemate Naoto Iwai (3-1, 1) with the touted 19 year old being narrowly out pointed by Ryosuke Nasu (7-2-2, 1), with Nasu taking a split decision victory.
(Scott Graveson covers the Asian boxing scene for www.asianboxing.info)
