Tokyo, Japan
After Saturday night we were told “Boxing is dead”, nobody told the Japanese and on Wednesday they had a brilliant card at the Ota-City General Gymnasium with a trio of world title fights.

The most notable of those title bouts was at Super Featherweight where WBA “super” champion Takashi Uchiyama (23-0-1, 19) scored a KO of the year contender against highly touted Thai Jomthong Chuwatana (9-1, 4). Coming into the bout Jomthong was an established tough guy following an extensive Muay Thai career. That however didn't help him here with Uchiyama bullying him from the middle of the opening round before blasting him out with a vicious right hand in the second round. For Jomthong this is a set back but one he'll likely bounce back from, as for Uchiyama this was one of his best performances, a real vintage display from the 35 year old Japanese puncher.

A second world title fight saw Ryoichi Taguchi (22-2-1, 9) make the first defense of his WBA Flyweight title as he bounced Thai veteran Kwanthai Sithmorseng (49-4-1, 26) on and off the canvas. Kwanthai was down in rounds 2,5,6,7 and 8 before being stopped in what was a gutsy but flawed performance from the challenger. For Taguchi the hope now is for a big fight before the year is over, possibly with Ryo Miyazaki or Randy Petalcorin, both of which would be great bouts.

The remaining world title bout saw Kumiko Seeser Ikehara (7-1-2, 3) retain her WBO female Minimumweight title bout with a 7th round split technical decision win against Kayoko Ebata (8-6, 4). Unfortunately for Ebata this was her 4th world title loss and at the age of 39 it seems very unlikely that she'll manage to get another shot. Things aren't great for Ikehara either who has now score back-to-back technical decision defenses and has been cut in each of those bouts.

Prior to the world title bouts there had been some under-card bouts. One of those saw Takumi Suda (12-10-2, 3) score an 8 round split decision win over Yoshinori Wakahara (7-5, 4) in a very close contest. Another under-card bout saw Tsuyoshi Naito (4-3-3, 2) take a 4th round TKO win over Tatsushi Kagawa (4-9-1, 1)

On the lower end of the card there were also a pair of 4 rounders. One of those saw the debuting Taiu Shiratori (1-0, 1) score an opening round blow out against Nao Sugawara (0-1) whilst the previously win-less Sayaka Aoki (1-2, 1) managed to score a 3rd round win against Akiko Oe (1-2, 1).

Chiang Mai, Thailand
In Thailand fans has 6 bouts and saw their fighters doing significantly better than they did in Japan.

The main event of the show saw former WBO Bantamweight champion Pungluang Sor Singyu (50-3, 34) take a 3rd round KO against Indonesian fighter Nouldy Manakane (29-17-1, 18). For Pungluang this was win #50 and kept him in the hunt for a WBO world title fight later in the year, likely to be against Ryo Akaho.

Another well known name in action on this card was Chonlatarn Piriyapinyo (54-2, 25) who made light work of the light hitting Yakobus Heluka (8-11, 1) with a 4th round KO. This was Chonlatarn's second win since he was out pointed in Macau last year by Vasyl Lomachenmo.

On the under-card fans saw a pair of stoppages. One of those saw Thewa Onesongchaigym (7-2, 2) take a 4th round KO against the debuting Theira Meik (0-1) whilst the other saw Rakniran Muadransarakam (5-0, 4) stop the win-less Saichon Or Ounsuwon (0-22) in the 5th round, this was the second meeting between Rakniran and Saichon with Rakniran taking a decision in their first bout at the end of last year.

The two remaining under-card bouts, both female contests, went the distance. These saw Yodying Superchamp (3-0, 1) continue her winning run with a victory against Kularbgoen Sor Visetkit (0-2) and a win for the debuting Petchwaree Mor Krungthepthonburi (1-0), who out pointed Fasung Kietmanop (0-1).

(Image courtesy of boxingnews.jp)

The year of 2014 ended in a bang with 2 major cards on the final day of the year. In some ways they were very frustrating cards for westerners who struggled to get live streams of them but on the other they further proved what we all knew, boxing fans can never have enough. Hopefully the struggles to get streams will help Western TV realise what we already know, there is a huge demand to watch fights from the east.

Osaka, Japan
Of the two cards the most interesting came from Osaka where we had several bouts of note, including one bout that really was a bout that fans wanted to watch, and that ended up being a little special in some ways. Rather notably it was also the last bout of the year.

That bout saw Cuban boxer-come-TV exile Guillermo Rigondeaux (15-0, 10) successfully defending his WBA “super” and WBO Super Bantamweight titles in what was an entertaining, up and down contest. Rigondeaux was fighting against Japan's Hisashi Amagasa (28-5-2, 19), a man best known for being a very lanky Featherweight, the OPBF Featherweight champion in fact. The fight saw the challenger set off as he meant to go on and really tried to take the fight to Rigondeaux who was simply too good for him early on however 2 knockdowns by Amagasa in round 7 suddenly got everyone excited and the biggest upset looked on, at least for a few moments. In round 9 it was Amagasa who was dropped and over the following 2 rounds his face began to fall apart which what looks to have been a broken jaw and a broken orbital bone. Those disfiguring injuries eventually forced him to retire from the bout. For Amagasa this performance is likely to have made him an over-night name for the hardcore international fans whilst Rigondeaux's victory proved that he can be in exciting, entertaining and vicious bouts as well as the proving he is vulnerable.

Another world title bout on this show saw Katsunari Takayama (28-7-0-1, 11) create his own moment of history as he became the first Japanese fighter to claim a version of all 4 major titles. This happened when he won the WBO Minimumweight, along with the IBF version of the belt, to complete a career grandslam. Takayama won both belts when he forced the referee to save the brave but exhausted and Go Odaira (11-4-3, 1), who suffered the first stoppage of his career.

A third bout featuring a world class fighter on this show saw former 2-weight world champion Kazuto Ioka (16-1, 10) score a sensational KO against former WBA interim Flyweight champion Jean Piero Perez (20-8-1, 14). For almost 5 rounds Perez gave as good as he got in what was a free swinging effort but a single right hand in the final minute of round 5 dropped him hard and never managed to recover.

In a Japanese title fight fans saw the talented Sho Ishida (18-0, 10) successfully defend the Super Flyweight title for the first time with a 5th round TKO over the over-matched Masato Morisaki (9-4-1, 5).

The undercard portion of this show was a bit of a farce if we're being honest with 6 bouts which saw Japanese fighters battling against Thai opposition. The Thai's failed to win a fight, in fact only 1 of them managed to see out the schedule. The one that did was Rannada Sor Vorasing (0-1) who was shut out by boxer-model Tomomi Takano (7-1, 5) in one of two female contests. The other female contest was a blow out as Terumi Nuki (6-0, 3) blasted away Petchluksor Sor Praithong (0-1) in just 107 seconds.

Nuki's quick blow out was one of 3 opening round blow outs on this undercard which also saw Ryuto Maekawa (10-0, 6) take care of Chanachai Sor Siamchai (0-2) in 133 seconds and the brilliantly promising Takeru Kamikubo (8-0, 5) wipe out Phetsaifar Lukmaelamperigym (0-6) in 158 seconds.

Another mismatch saw former world champion Ryo Miyazaki (22-1-3, 13) take care of Kajonsak Nattapolgym (0-1) in round 3 whilst another 3rd round victory saw Takahiro Yamamoto (15-3, 12) take care of Kamraiyok Or Wandavee (0-1).

Tokyo, Japan
The other show took place in Tokyo where we had a trio of world title bouts which all had their own story to tell.

The most interesting of those stories was that of the heavy handed Takashi Uchiyama (22-0-1, 18) who retained his WBA Super Featherweight title with a 9th round retirement victory over Argentina's game Israel Perez (27-3-1, 16). The bout was Uchiyama's first in exactly a year and saw him looking the boss in what was an interesting contest with a man who had come to win. The bout saw Perez try and win but eventually he retired as Uchiyama began to shake off the ring rust and go for the kill. From what we understand a post-fight story here revolved around the scoring, particularly by Gustavo Padilla who is reported to have had the bout even at 85-85, a frankly puzzling score card, though not his worst of the night...

...Padilla's worst score came in the WBA Super Flyweight title fight that saw Kohei Kono (30-8-1, 13) retain his title with a split decision draw against Norberto Jimenez (20-8-4, 10). The bout, scored a split draw, saw Padilla handing in a ridiculous 115-112 card in favour of Jimenez, a card so ridiculous that someone needs to look into him, especially given what he did in the Uchiyama/Perez bout. This contest was close, and a draw wasn't an awful result, though we did feel Kono deserved the win, however that card is just wrong. In the ring Jimenez used his movement and speed to keep Kono from unloading on him and exposed some flaws in the champions armour however he failed to really capitalise.

The other world title bout on this card saw a new champion being crowned as Ryoichi Taguchi (21-2-1, 8), a man previously best known for taking Naoya Inoue the distance, scored a clear 12 round win over Peruvian Alberto Rossel (32-9-0-1, 13) to claim the WBA Light Flyweight title. Taguchi started slowly but ran out a clear winner, dropping Rossel twice to cement his win.

The under-card here was much more interesting than the under-card in Osaka with bouts that weren't all mismatches and blow outs. One of the few stoppages saw Chikashi Hayashizaki (6-4-1, 2) score an unexpected stoppage of Takahiro Araki (5-4, 3), in the 4th round of a scheduled 6, whilst another stoppage on this card saw Minoru Iizuka (4-2, 4) score a 3rd round KO over the previously unbeaten Ryusei Nakajima (2-1, 1), in a scheduled 6 rounder.

The most competitive of the undercard bouts resulted in a 6 round split decision draw between Masayasu Nakamura (4-1-1, 4) and Takahiro Kinoshita (5-3-2, 2) in a bout that saw all 3 cards looking very similar to each other. Another very competitive but saw Shun Shimazaki (6-6-1) narrowly defeat Hisasho Owada (5-9-1) in another 6 rounder.

In the 4 rounders on the card fans saw the debuting Kazumasa Akagi (1-0) score a narrow decision win over Yukihiro Kaneko (0-3) whilst Kazuhiro Baba (1-2) claimed his first win with a razor thin win over Kazuki Aso (0-2).

(Image courtesy of boxingnews.jp)

This past Saturday wasn't a major one for Asian boxing fans but there was still a host of action, much of which was involved fighters at or around the OPBF title level.

Tokyo, Japan
The most notable of all the matches involving an Asian fighter took place at the Korakuen Hall as the unified Japanese OPBF Middleweight champion Akio Shibata (23-8-1, 9) retained his unified crown for the first time. Shibata was always expected to over come his opponent, Hikaru Nishida (10-7-1, 3), but was forced to use all hsi experience to over-come a fighter that we believe will come again in the future. Nishida, although not a world class fighter, is a man who will give everyone at this level a hard bout and we doubt Shibata will be in a rush for a rematch.

Whilst Shibata is a unified OPBF/Japanese champion we did see a former world champion on the undercard in the form of former IBF Minimumweight champion Florante Condes (27-9-1, 23). Condes, travelling to Japan, took on former Japanese Light Flyweight champion Ryoichi Taguchi (20-2-1, 8), seemed on the verge of scoring a shock stoppage over the gutsy Japanese fighter but Taguchi showed all his heart to recover from a very hard knockdown in the second round. Taguchi's heart saw him recovering over the following round to take a very hard fought decision but neither man came out of this bout with any shame and we're going to look forward to seeing both in action again.

One man who did manage to see off his hurt opponent was Hayato Hokazono (18-4-1, 11) who took out Osamu Hashimoto (9-7, 1) in the 6th of a scheduled 8 rounder. Likewise Yuji Wauke (18-4-1, 9) managed to take out his opponent, Jonel Gadapan (8-7-1, 4), needing just 5 of the 8 scheduled rounds to close the show.

The quickest of the contests saw the monstrously hard hitting Yuichi Yokoyama (14-2, 13) take out Tatsuya Yanagi (10-2, 4) in just  169 seconds as the power of Yokoyama was felt in a big way. Yanagi managed to recover his feet but he was counted out doing so following a huge straight right of Yokoyama's.

In a 5 round bout Yoshihisa Yokota (6-10-1, 2) took a decision over Yamato Nakagawa (4-4, 2) whilst in the opening bout Shinya Ito (2-01) took a 4 round decision over Shinnosuke Yoshimori (1-2, 1) in what was the show's opening bout.

Metro Manila, Philippines
In the Philippines fans had the chance to catch a 7 fight show in Metro Manila. The main event on this show saw recent OPBF Featherweight title challenger Vinvin Rufino (35-16-3, 16) retain his GAB Featherweight title but trade knockdowns in a very competitive bout with Cristian Abila (11-13-3, 3). Rufino was dropped in the 11th round but managed to even it out by scoring a knockdown of his own in the following round to give us a bout what was more competitive than the records of the fighters would have suggested going into the contest.

Whilst Rufino had failed in his OPBF title challenge earlier this year the co-feature had a man who had taken his chance with both hands and claimed the Light Flyweight title with a stunning victory over Virgilio Silvano back in March. That was the hard hitting Jonathan Taconing (19-2-1, 16) who stopped the previously unbeaten Jaipetch Chaiyonggym (3-1, 2) with a devastating body shot in the 3rd round.

Another man who scored a body shot KO was the unbeaten Randy Braga (13-0-1, 3) who stopped the very poor Dexter Mendoza (11-14-2, 3) in just 47 seconds!

Some of the bouts, other than the main event, on this show did go the distance, including the sole 6 round bout which saw Glenn Suminguit (13-2, 7) take a very wide decision over Jomar Borbon (4-18-2, 2), a very narrow 4 round majority decision for the unbeaten Roderick Flores (3-0-1, 1) over the debuting Jayson Dogelio (0-1) and a debut victory for Marlon Paniamogan (1-0) who took a shut out over Jaymark Borbon (0-1).

The only other 4 round bout on this card saw Raymond Yanong (2-1, 2) defeating Christian Rayta (0-2), who retired at the end of the second round.

(Image courtesy of boxingnews.jp)