September 20th

September 20th has certainly been an interesting day in the history of Asian boxing. That's not to say we've had a lot of huge fights but we have had some very interesting events on this day.

In 1987 Koreans fans saw one of their boxing hero's Myung-Woo Yuh retain his WBA Light Flyweight title with a stoppage victory against Rodolfo Blanco. This was the 6th defense of the belt by the Korean great known as the "Sonagi". Yuh's reign would last from 1985 all the way to 1991 when he lost the belt to Hiroki Ioka. A rematch with Ioka saw Yuh reclaim his belt which he would defend once more in 1993 before retiring with the Light Flyweight record for most defense and the legacy of being one of the greatest South Korean fighters of all time.

On this day in 2010 Japanese fans had mixed emotions. On one hand they saw the always entertaining Kohei Kono come up short in a WBC Super Flyweight world title fight against Tomas Rojas, sadly for Kono this was his second defeat in world title bouts and it would be some 15 months before he got another bout as this level. That loss for Kono was softened somewhat for Japanese fans as Takashi Uchiyama retained his WBA Super Featherweight title with a 5th round TKO against Indonesian challenger Roy Mukhlis. This was Uchiyama's second defense and came just over 8 months after he had won the title. Since then Uchiyama has gone on to prove himself as one of the divisional elite and one of the hardest punchers in world boxing.

As well as the world title fights 3 notable fighters fought their debuts on this day. The first of those was in 1959 when fans saw the debut of future Flyweight king Hiroyuki Ebihara. Ebihara made his debut with a 4th round KO against Kazuhijo Kurihara. In 2001 Thai fans saw the debut of Pornsawan Porpramook. Pornsawan stopped Victor Ranturambee inside a round on his debut and would later become the WBA Minimumweight champion with a narrow win over Muhammad Rachman. Although the win over Rachman is his crowning achievement he is best known for his loss to Akira Yaegashi, in his first defense. The third notable debutant was Ryol Li Lee who debuted in 2005 with a win over Kazuki Murakami. Lee would later go on to win the WBA Super Bantamweight title with a great win over Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym though lost his title in his first defense to Akifumi Shimoda.

One interesting birthday to celebrate is that of Thailand's wonderfully named Knockout CP Freshmart. At the time of writing Knockout is training for the biggest fight of his life, against Carlos Buitrago, and his birthday may well be a very quiet one due to his upcoming contest.

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

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