August 31st

In recent years August 31st has become a notable day in Asian boxing circles. This has seen a number of recent world title fights.

Two of those bouts occurred in 2011. One of those bouts saw Koki Kameda, the then WBA Bantamweight champion, narrowly over-come Mexican challenger David De La Mora. Koki scored a knock down in round 3 and that effectively earned him the close win, without it the bout would have been a split decision draw on the official cards.

On the same card as the Kameda/De La Mora fight we also saw Japan's Tomonobu Shimizu defeat Hugo Fidel Cazares and claim the WBA Super Flyweight title. For Shimizu it was third time lucky after having previously lost in Flyweight title bouts to Daisuke Naito and Pongsaklek Wonjongkam though unfortunately his reign was a short one losing in his first defence, 8 months later, to Tepparith Kokietgym.

A year after the title double header we saw Pongsaklek Wonjongkam win his final title, the WBC International Flyweight title. Wonjongkam would take a 12 round decision Hyobu Nakagama to win the bout though sadly he would lose the title just over 2 months later following a shock stoppage loss to Rey Megrino. Following that loss Wonjongkam fought just thrice more to record his 90th win, since then he hasn't fought and it appears he's retired.

Just last year we saw another world title fight, though this time it was in Mexico. That fight saw Atsushi Kakutani challenge Adrian Hernandez for the WBC Light Flyweight title. The bout saw Kakutani drop Hernandez early in the bout though suffer a stoppage loss to the Mexican just a few rounds later. Whilst this was disappointing at the time Japanese fans would see one of their fighters get revenge over Hernandez not too much later when Naoya Inoue stopped Hernandez in 6 rounds to become Japan's fastest world champion.

It's not all been recent fights however and in 1976 we saw Filipino puncher Ben Villaflor score his final career win as he defeated Rogelio Castaneda with a 10 round decision. This bout was sandwiched between a draw and a loss to Samuel Serrano and was fought whilst Villaflor was still the WBA Super Featherweight champion.

(Image, of Shimizu, courtesy of boxrec.com)

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