September 8th

September 8th doesn't stand out as an amazing day in Asian boxing but is still a notable one with several bouts of note.

On this day in 1963 South Korean Yung-Kil Chung was born in the city of Goheung. Although never a world champion Chung was a South Korean national champion and a 2-weight OPBF title holder. He is however best known for his world title fight losses to Lloyd Honeyghan in 1988 and to Marlon Starling the following year. Chung's carer came to an end in 1993 when he was stopped in a round by Armand Picar and he subsequently retired with an excellent 45 fight career consisting of 36 wins, 7 losses and 2 draws.

In 1973 the legendary Guts Ishimatsu got his second taste of fight at the world level as he suffered a 10th round loss to the legendary Roberto Duran in Panama. This bout came just over 3 years after Ishimatsu had fought Ismael Laguna, also in Panama. Just 7 months after this fight Ishimatsu would defeat Rodolfo Gonzalez for the WBC Lightweight title, a title he would defend 5 times before coming up short against the excellent Esteban De Jesus in Puerto Rico.

Thai fans got to see one of their champions defending a world title on this day in 1996 as Saen Sor Ploenchit retained his WBA Flyweight title with an excellent decision over Russian Alexander Makhmutov to record what would be his final defence of the belt. Although not a puncher Saen would defend the title 9 times in a little under 3 years. After losing the belt, to Jose Bonilla, it took more than a year for Saen to return to the boxing ring and unfortunately he was never able to get another world title bout and ended his career in 2003 after suffering stoppage losses to Joichiro Tatsuyoshi and Shoji Kimura.

In 2001 we saw the always fun to watch Kazakh Vassiliy Jirov retain his IBF Cruiserweight title with an 8th round stoppage of the dangerous Julian Letterlough. It was the 5th defence by the then unbeaten Jirov who would successfully defend his belt just once more before running into American star James Toney and losing an all action but to "Light Out".

(Image, of  Saen Sor Ploenchit, courtesy of boxrec.com)

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