Category: Kanat Islam

Asian Boxing Monthly Awards - July 2019

8/1/2019

We start the month of August by looking backwards, over what has been a rather emotional rollercoaster of a month of fight fans. Rather than focusing on the bad, the ugly and the negative we'll try to stay upbeat as we cover our monthly award winners for this past July.

Fighter of the Month
Ryota Murata
It's fair to saw that we, like many others, had written Ryota Murata off at the start of the month, and expected to see him sent into retirement by Rob Brant, the man who had taken the WBA "regular" Middleweight title form him last year. Instead we got a resurgent Murata who battered Brant to the point where Luis Pabon had no option but to step in. This wasn't just a man avenging a loss, this was a man telling the world his career had real legs left in it, and that he had a new found fire in his belly. If this Murata turns up against some of the better fighters in the division he could give some of those guys a real test, though the top 2 or 3 guys in the division would still be far too good for him.

Notables -
Kenshiro, Joe Noynay, Manny Pacquiao

Fight of the Month
Naoko Fujioka (18-2, 7) vs Tenkai Tsunami (26-12, 15)
Whilst female boxing is still criminally under-rated and over-looked there are bouts that really shine above the rest, and in the last few years we've had some amazing female contests. This month we actually had one as 5-weight world champion Naoko Fujioka battled in a thrilling 10 round battle against Tenkai Tsunami. The bout really swung with momentum shifting in the second half, when it became a question of whether Fujioka could do enough to reel in Tsunami's lead and what we ended up getting was a real treat, combining boxing with fighting. This wasn't an all out war, but it was a wonderfully balanced, competitive, exciting and thrilling clash.

Notables-
Manny Pacquiao Vs Keith Thurman, Han Bin Suh Vs Jong Won Jung, Jin Minamide Vs Tetsu Araki

KO of the Month
Kanat Islam KO1 Julio De Jesus
Kazakh fighter Kanat Islam returned to the ring for the first time in almost 2 years and took part in one of the shortest bouts we've ever seen. In fact he only needed to land around 3 right hands and a short left hook to leave Julio De Jesus down, flat on his face. This a short fight but a brutal finish for Islam, who showed he still had it, despite having had his body ravaged by injury. Aesthetically this probably wasn't the most beautiful KO of the month, but it as vicious and truly nasty. A great KO.

Notable-
Roldan Aldea Vs Mikhail Alexeev, Ginjiro Shigeoka Vs Clyde Azarcon

Prospect
Mikito Nakano (3-0, 3)
We had a lot of prospects in action this month, a number of which took on their biggest opponents so far. For us the man that left impression from those who are clearly just prospects was Mikito Nakano, who scored his third win by taking out decent Filipino Arvin Yurong in impressive fashion. Nakano, who weren't sold on originally, looks very much like the real deal and we don't expect him to take long to reach title level as he is an excellent talent.

It should be noted that this month Ginjiro Shigeoka showed he is no longer a prospect, but a fully fledged contender, taking his first title. Despite being just 19 and fighting in his 4th bout it's hard to consider a regional champion as still a "prospect"

Notables -
Andy Hiraoka, Koshin Takeshima

Upset
Roldan Aldea KO8 Mikhail Alexeev
Filipino fighter Roldan Aldea will never be a world beater but recent bouts proved he was a solid fighter, going the distance with Shawn Oda, Xiangxiang Sun and Kenichi Ogawa. Despite being solid no one would have given him any chance against unbeaten Russian hopeful Mikhail Alexeev, but he held his own through a brilliant and pulsating 8 round affair, before scoring a brutal KO of Alexeev. This was a shocker, even if Alexeev was never one of the most touted or Russian hopefuls, as Aldea seemed to have become little more than a journeyman.

Notables-
Sho Nakazawa v Jinya Ito

Round
Manny Pacquiao Vs Keith Thurman (10)
We had some brilliant fights through the month but few rounds really stood out, with consistency over the course of a fight really being more notable than the actual rounds themselves. There was however a few rounds that did make us sit up, and the best of those was the 10th round between Manny Pacquiao and Keith Thurman. The round was at the very highest level and saw momentum swing, from being a Thurman round to a Pacquiao in the final moments. It was brilliant drama and although not a round with a phonebooth war it was compelling and absolutely worthy of a rewatch.

Notables-
Jin Minamide Vs Tetsu Araki (6)

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Asian Boxing Awards - Week 27 2019

7/8/2019

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It feels like the last few weeks I've started our weekly awards by apologising for a lack of action, and interesting awards winners. It was as if I was making excuses for these articles not being the most interesting. This week however things have suddenly changed and we've had a lot of incredible action, compelling match ups and interesting fights. It's not been a perfect week, but given what we've had recently it has been a very solid week.

Fighter of the Week
Koki Inoue (13-0, 10)
After a couple of forgetful performances from Koki Inoue he managed to put on a show as he defended the Japanese Light Welterweight title and stopped Ryuji Ikeda. On paper this was an easy first defense, it was supposed to be, but he still put on the performance he needed, shining like the exciting fighter he proved to be earlier in his career. There was, obviously, areas to still improve on, but his ring IQ, control of distance and powerful flowing combinations were excellent, and it's obvious that matched with the right opponent he can be very fun to watch.

Performance of the Week
Kanat Islam (26-0, 21)
After being out of the ring for close to 2 years we saw Kazakh hopeful Kanat Islam return to the ring and put in one of the shortest bout's well see in 2019. In fact it lasted less time than it would take for most fans to sit down after the national anthem, but still put the 154lbs division on alert. Islam pretty hurt Julio De Jesus with the first connect then let only a handful of shots go before De Jesus hit the canvas and the referee instantly waved off the contest. Officially this was stopped after 14 seconds, and it was all Islam.

Fight
Tsuyoshi Tameda (19-4-2, 17) vs Tae Il Atsumi (16-2, 8)
We expected a great fight when Japanese puncher Tsuyoshi Tameda took on Japanese based Korean foe Tae Il Atsumi. There was something about the match up that got us really excited before a punch was thrown and it took only seconds to see that out expectations were pretty accurate. This bout was dominated by Tsuyoshi throwing bombs from the off, his lack of accuracy left him open but it was only a matter of time before he was going to land. When he did Atsumi tried to respond, and the touchpaper was lit! This didn't last long, but was thoroughly entertaining.

Round
Tsuyoshi Tameda vs Tae Il Atsumi RD1
Whilst we had some great fights no single round really stood out, with the best of them arguably being the pick of the bunch. It was a round that had some really fun back and forth moments, some knockdowns and some wild brawling as Tameda forced his fight on to Atsumi. The second round was too short to really steal the show, but the first round was damn good action!

KO
Kanat Islam KO1 Julio De Jesus
Whilst it wasn't beautiful it's hard to argue with the blow out KO that Kanat Islam scored as the best of the week, it was certainly the most impactful, eye catching and destructive. A huge right hand over the top started things and 2 more followed to send De Jesus crashing to the canvas. Yes this bout was an horrific mismatch, even when you accept the long lay off for Islam, but the finish was truly brutal.

Prospect
Mikito Nakano (3-0, 3)
We had a lot of prospects in action over the last 7 days, and they included some sure fire stars like Taku Kuwahara, Kuntae Lee, Sultan Zaurbek and even the unheralded Mark Vicelles. The one who impressed the most however was Mikito Nakano, who took a huge step up and blew out Filipino Arvin Yurong in what was a really credible test. Yurong had shown some ability against Xiang Li back in January but Nakano went through him like a knife through hot butter to score a 2nd round KO. We knew Nakano was good, but this was special and the Asian scene at Featherweight is seemingly on the verge of a new star.

Upcoming fight
Shinobu Charlie Hosokawa (11-4, 10) v Koki Tyson (14-3-2, 12)
This coming week has 4 male world title fights, a female world title fight and so much more, though for us the bout we're most excited about is the OPBF Middleweight title bout between Shinobu Charlie Hosokawa and Koki Tyson, in what we're expecting will be a full on shoot out. It's not the highest quality bout we're expecting to see, but it has the real potential to be the most exciting, the most fan friendly and the most entertianing. In fact if this bout doesn't end up being a shoot out we'll be truly surprised...and a little bit disappointed!

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Asian Boxing Monthly Awards - July 2019

Asian Boxing Awards - Week 27 2019

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