April 21st

2017 - This day last year we saw the 3rd meeting between Tetsuya Hisada and Kenichi Horikawa, who were fighting for the vacant Japanese Light Flyweight title. The first 2 bouts were all won by Horikawa, though Hisada scored the win in the one that mattered and claimed the belt which had been vacated Ken Shiro, ahead of Ken Shiro's first bout with Ganigan Lopez. Since then Hisada's career has gone from strength to strength and he is now moving towards a world title fight. As for Horikawa he's stayed busy with 3 low key wins, to break the 50 fight mark.

2013 - Exactly 5 years ago fans in Tokyo got an incredibly thrilling bout for the OPBF Light Welterweight title, as Min Wook Kim and Shinya Iwabuchi traded bombs for the Oriental title. Kim came out on top to record his 3 defense of the title and would make one more defense, stopping Valentine Hosokawa, before vacating the title. Iwabuchi would fight for the title in two more bouts, but would suffer stoppages in both of those contests to Keita Obara and Al Rivera.

2009 - The death of former IBF Super Featherweight champion Hwan-Kil Yuh came on this day. Yuh isn't remembered as well as some other Korean champions from the 1980's but Yuh did make his mark as he was the inaugural IBF Super Featherweight champion. Yuh won the title in 1984, defeating Rod Sequenan and made one successful defense, defeating Sak Galaxy, before losing the belt to Lester Ellis in 1985.

2007 - Filipino puncher Warlito Parrenas made his debut on this day 11 years ago. The exciting slugger scored a 2nd round TKO win over Jerome Bontog to begin his career and has gone on to have a fun career, even if he has failed to reach the pinnacle of the sport. Although not a world beater Parrenas has fought the likes of Marlon Tapales, Jonathan Taconing, Atsushi Kakutani, David Carmona and Naoya Inoue. Although he's nearing the end of his career Parrenas is still and active fighter and is also now a trainer at the Morioka Gym.

2006 - When we do these “On This Day” articles we expect to find some little bits of history, debuts, deaths, title wins and the such. Amazingly however on this day in 2006 there actually was something a bit bigger, the first ever professional bout in an independent Tajikistan, which saw Akhror Makhmadshoev score a 2nd round KO win over Maruf Fayzulloev. Whilst that doesn't sound too amazing the country really did go through a let in the years before this bout. The first ever card in Tajikistan came in 1991, in the years that followed the country gained it's independence and went through a bloody civil war. The fact we had any professional boxing there at all is amazing and hopefully the sport will grow in the sport. The country still hasn't got a thriving professional scene, but there was 2 shows held there last years and there is hope that the country will develop some a home grown scene in the future.