December 3rd

December 3rd has been an interesting day in Asian boxing boxing with several notable bouts, in fact there was 3 last year alone. We won't pretend to have hunted them all down but we have got 5 of them you!

The first came in 1996 when Thailand's Pichit Chor Siriwat shocked the then WBA Light Flyweight champion Keiji Yamaguchi with a 2nd round stoppage of the Japanese fighter. Yamaguchi was seeking his second defense of the belt but was flattened by a monster shot from Pichit which dropped the champion hard. Pichit managed to regain his feet but was clearly still feeling the effects as the referee waved off the bout.

In 2004 Christ John, then then WBA Featherweight champion, fought to a technical draw with Jose Rojas courtesy of a nasty headclash between the two men. This was Johns's second defense of the title and was the first mark on his record in 35 bouts. The two men would have a rematch in 2007 which was clearly won by John who twice dropped Rosas.

In 2013 we had the aforementioned trio of title fights. The least notable of those saw Katsunari Takayama successfully defending his IBF Minimumweight title against Vergilio Silvano in an excellent performance from the Japanese fighter. Takayama was like a buzzsaw here as he out boxed, out moved and out landed the Filipino challenger who was never in the bout.

On the same show we saw Tomoki Kameda retain the WBO Bantamweight title with a clear decision over Immanuel Naidjala in what was a clear but not impressive victory for the Japanese youngster, who was defending his title for the first time.

The same also saw on a very controversial contest between Daiki Kameda and Liborio Solis. The contest was supposed to unify the WBA and IBF Super Flyweight titles though Solis missed weight, massively and went on to beat Kameda. The Japanese fighter wasn't stripped though vacated whilst the JBC banned the Kameda gym and now, a year on, the JBC still haven't let a Kameda fighter fight in Japan.