Takao Sakurai v Chung Shin-Cho
Whilst we don't intend to feature a lot of amateur boxing bouts on here the bout between Takao Sakurai and Chung Shin-Cho from the 1964 Olympics is an exception. The bout, one of the most historical amateur bouts is a fight that cannot be missed from any complete list of major bouts regarding Asian boxing.
Sadly as we all know footage and videos from back in the 1960's are scarce as are details on how the bout went down, but lets start with what we know.
Japan's Sukarai had been boxing for several years in the amateur ranks. He had claimed several domestic championships but internationally he was an unknown (with the World Amateur Championships not beginning until 1974 there wasn't a great deal of international exposure available for fighters).
Despite being a relative unknown Sakurai had fought his way to the Olympics which was to be held in his homeland of Japan. In fact They were being held in the city of Tokyo, the same city that he was going to university in.
Sadly as we all know footage and videos from back in the 1960's are scarce as are details on how the bout went down, but lets start with what we know.
Japan's Sukarai had been boxing for several years in the amateur ranks. He had claimed several domestic championships but internationally he was an unknown (with the World Amateur Championships not beginning until 1974 there wasn't a great deal of international exposure available for fighters).
Despite being a relative unknown Sakurai had fought his way to the Olympics which was to be held in his homeland of Japan. In fact They were being held in the city of Tokyo, the same city that he was going to university in.
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At the Olympics Sukarai had fought his way past opponents from the UK, Ghana, Romania and Uruguay dropping just a round on route to the final. He had been genuinely impressive especially when you consider that going in to the Olympics Japan had never had an Olympic boxer reach the final, in fact they'd only ever had 1 medal, a Bronze, won by Kiyoshi Tanabe 4 years earlier.
Of course finals feature 2 men and stood in the opposite corner to the Japanese fighter was the much more well known Chung Shin-Cho. Chung had competed at the 1960 Olympics in Rome and although he lost there in his first bout he had bounced back well and claimed a Gold at the 1962 Asian Games (incidentally so had Kiyoshi Tanaba). Like Sakurai, Chung had reached the final pretty impressively. He had beaten fighters from Egypt, Argentina, Cuba (albeit by walk over) and Mexico with only his Argentinian opponent giving him anything resembling a hard contest. As anyone with an understanding of Asian political history will know Korea and Japan have a past together. For a large portion of the 20th century Korea was under Japanese rule, in fact it wasn't until 1945 that the US and the USSR liberated the Koreans. That gave this bout an even spicier edge than one would expect and added yet another underlying storyline to a bout that had history on the line. Could Sakurai become the first Japanese boxer to claim an Olympic Gold? Could Chung put one over on Japan just 19 years after Korea had been granted it's independence? As it turned out Chung couldn't cope with the power and clean hitting of Sukurai who scored 3 knockdowns in the 2nd round with the Japanese crowd cheering him on to claim a 2nd round RSC (Referee Stopped Contest) victory and of course the Olympic Gold medal. Amazingly it would be almost 50 years later that Japan would have a second Olympic boxing Gold medal thanks to Middleweight Ryota Murata. Sadly Sukurai passed away of esophageal cancer just months before Murata claimed the Gold |
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Following the Olympics Sakurai turned professional and fought between 1965 and 1970. His professional career was expected to be something amazing though unfortunately he fell short of expectation despite running up a very respectable record of 30-2 (4).
Unfortunately for the Japanese fighter his style didn't really work too well in the professional ranks and hi slack of stopping power hindered his career massively. Despite the style and power issues Sakurai did claim an OPBF title and fight 2 of the best fighters on the planet at the time in Ruben Olivares and Lionel Rose (the only two men to defeat him in the professional ranks) with the Rose fight being a world title fight. Unfortunately little is known about the Korean though we believe that he never turned professional. There doesn't seem to be any record of his death currently available which would mean that he celebrated his 73 birthday on 6th January this year. Although no footage of their bout together exists there is footage of Sakurai v Lionel Rose from 1987, we've included the first few rounds below with English commentary. This footage is thanks to West91491. |
