September 25th

In 1973 Sang-Hyun Kim made his professional debut. Kim, from Busan, would actually fight 3 times on this date including his debut and would win all 3 of those bouts including a 10 round decision over Kwang-Min Kim in 1980. Although none of his big wins came on this day he was known in the 1970's for winning the WBC Light Welterweight crown that he defended twice between 1978, when he won it from Saensak Muangsurin, and 1980, when he lost it Saoul Mamby.

In 1994 we saw Thailand's very talented Saen Sor Ploenchit completely dominate Korean Yong-Kang Kim. Saen was defending his WBA Flyweight title for the third time in what was an excellent year for the Thai. Saen had won the title in February with a victory over David Griman and had defended is against Jesus Rosas in April and Aquiles Guzman in June. After beating Kim the Thai would fit in another defence in December in what was close to a career defining year.

A year after Saen's defense over Kim we saw another Thai in action, this time the great Chatchai Sasakul who suffered his first loss with a unanimous decision defeat at the hands of the great Yuri Arbachakov, then then WBC Flyweight champion. The bout between unbeaten men saw both entering with records of 20-0 (15) and was the 7th defense for Arbachakov who would later lose a rematch with Sasakul in 1997 before retiring with a record of 23-1 (16).

In 2005 we saw a Japanese world title double header. The bouts here saw Yutaka Niida defending his WBA Minimumweight title against Filipino challenger Eriberto Gejon, via a 10th round technical decision, whilst Hozumi Hasegawa retained his WBC Bantamweight title with a win over Gerardo Martinez, via a 7th round TKO. For Niida this was the third defense of the title which he had captured for a second time around 14 months earlier whilst for Hasegawa it was the first defense of the title he had taken from Thailand's Veeraphol Sahaprom earlier in the year.

On this day in 2010 we saw Japan's Daiki Kameda successfully defend his WBA Flyweight title for the first time with a decision win against Takefumi Sakata. The defense came some 7 months after Kameda had taken the title from Thai veteran Denkaosan Kaovichit and would be one of just 2 successful defenses by Daiki.

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

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