Japanese tough guy Nobuo Nashiro only fought 26 times as a professional, between his 2003 debut and his final bout in 2013. Despite that he was a 2-time world champion who fought in 10 world title bouts, and an interim world title bout, and really did take on a relative who's who of the Super Flyweight division from 2006 to 2013. Among those he faced were Martin Castillo, Alexander Munoz, Kohei Kono, Hugo Fidel Cazares, Thomas Rojas, Suriyan Por Chokchai, Tepparith Kokietgym and Denkaosan Kaovichit.
Whilst few in the west are aware of Nashiro, which is disappointing as his career was genuinely action packed and interest. With that in mind we'd like to let fans get to know a little more about the tough southpaw, and so we bring you 10 facts you probably didn't know about...Nobuo Nashiro. 1-When Nashiro was boxing in high school he was guided by Hiroaki Takami, who had represented Japan at the 1984 Olympics in LA. 2-As an amateur Nashiro went a less than outstanding 38-19 (20) 3-Nobuo's brother is Yuji Nashiro, a Kickboxer who had mixed success from 2006 to 2013. 4-Given his lack of real amateur success Nashiro wasn't expected to be a star. That however changed when he upset Hidenobu Honda in what was a major upset. Honda, up to this point boasted a 26-3 (14) record, was world ranked, a 2-time world title challenger and his only losses, barring a defeat 8 years earlier, had come at world level. He was expected to move towards a third world title fight. Nashiro, on the other hand was 4-0 (3), had only fought 12 career rounds and was regarded as a "biting dog". The win instantly put Nashiro into the world title mix, and he would get his first world title shot less than 2 years later! 5-Nashiro is known as an incredibly tough guy, and that toughness extended away from boxing. In June 2007, after his loss to Alexander Munoz, Nashiro suffered a traffic accident and injured his cervical spine. Despite the injury he was back in the ring just months later, winning his return bout in November 6-Nashiro's final bout, a contest with Denkaosan Kaovichit, was delayed for 11 days by the organisers in Thailand. Interestingly the two men were relatively friendly with each other and Nashiro had sparred with Denkaosan, to help prepare for a bout with Tepparith Kokietgym. 7-Nashiro got married on April 29th 2009 to a woman he'd been dating for 6 years. He was engaged just weeks earlier, prior to his memorable bout with Konosuke Tomiyama. 8-In his free time he enjoys playing Billards 9-Nashiro's first child, a daughter, was born on January 12th 2011 10-Following his retirement from in ring activity Nashiro has played a major role in the development of boxing talent at Kindai University. He has been a lead boxing coach there and is now a director there. He took the training role with the hope of creating Olympic hopefuls for Tokyo 2020, though a number of fighters he has had a role in developing have recently gone professional, including excellent female fighter Kasumi Saeki. notably he was the first professional world champion to take a boxing director role at a University
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This past Monday we saw talented teenager Jin Sasaki (8-0, 7) score his biggest to date, blasting out Shun Akaiwa inside a minute to claim a JBC ranking at 140lbs. The win was incredibly impressive for the 19 year old and immediately sees him make up for the disappointment of his Rookie of the Year journey ending the way it did last year, where he was unable to compete in one of the bouts.
The win for Sasaki also opens up the big question of "What is next for Jin Sasaki?" To try and answer that we have decided to feature Sasaki in our latest "Five For..." article, looking at 5 potential domestic rivals for the talented and fast rising teenage prodigy. 1-Akihiro Kondo (32-9-1, 18) We start with potentially the most interesting possible match up, and one that, on paper, should be relatively easy to make. That would put Sasaki against veteran tough guy Akihiro Kondo. This would be a serious test for Sasaki, who would go into the bout knowing that Kondo is teak tough, but also a great chance for the youngster to get some serious ring time and experience. The teams of the two fighters both work closely with those behind A-Sign, with Sasaki being an Hachioji Nakaya gym fighter and Kondo being from the Ichiriki, and it would be a brilliant main event for an A-Sign show, with a potential passing of the torch moment...or a potential chance for Kondo to put in one final great performance. 2-Ryuji Ikeda (14-7-3, 9) Of course Kondo might be seen as a step too far, a step too much, and too much too soon. With that in mind Sasaki's team might want to find someone a little bit easier. If that's the case then a bout with Ryuji Ikeda might made a lot of sense. Ikeda fought for the title Japanese title last year, being stopped in 5 rounds by Koki Inoue, and despite that loss, and a subsequent one to Aso Ishiwaki, he has proven himself to be a fan friendly and aggressive fighter who comes to win. With that in mind we suspect Ikeda Vs Sasaki would be a lot of fun, and a very, very winnable bout for the teenager, who could potentially do the job much quicker than Inoue. 3-Cristiano Aoqui (15-8-2, 11) Talking about fan friendly bouts a contest between Sasaki and Japanese-Brazilian puncher Cristiano Aoqui is one that oozes potential excitement. Aoqui isn't the most polished or talented fighter out there, but he's a wicked puncher, with an aggressive style and has a fighters mentality. He can be out boxed, but not many in Japan will be able to do that, and even fewer will be able to win a war with him. Given how Sasaki fights we suspect he'll be one of the very few who would fancy his chance in a war with the man from the Kadoebi Gym. This would be a great bout on either an A-Sign show or a Kadoebi promoted Slugfest show, and would be fit to be the chief support on an event from either team. 4-Kenta Endo (5-1-1, 4) We stay on the idea of wanting to see Sasaki in fan friendly bouts with a contest against Teiken's Kenta Endo, with the added fact that this could well end up on a Dynamic Glove card, televised by G+. Endo was destroying fighters early in his career, with his power, aggression and physicality, but lost last time out to recent Sasaki victim Shun Akaiwa. For Endo a bout with the man who beat the man who beat him would certainly be an attractive proposition whilst Sasaki would be taking on a puncher and potentially getting some TV exposure. This would be a fun clash and a potentially very explosive one between two men who can really throw bombs. 5-Aso Ishiwaki (8-2-1, 6) We end this with a fight that, from a fans perspective, would be great but a bout that really doesn't make a lot of sense from the fighters perspective. That is a clash between Sasaki and 21 year excitement machine Aso Ishiwaki. Unless the Japanese Youth title could be put on the line we don't see Sasaki and Ishiwaki meeting, though we do wish we could. Sasaki is of a hard hitting boxer-puncher with a very aggressive style and heavy hands. Ishiwaki on the other hand is a teak tough pressure fighter, with under-rated power and very over-looked boxing skills, putting them together would provide real fireworks, test both men and give us something truly memorable. At the moment though it's one we suspect will be left to the side, and could end up being one that builds for a few years. Both of these young men have the ability to win national titles and we would love to see them clash when the bout is worth more, even if it would be an amazing bout for the start of 2021. Earlier this week we saw the latest show from A-Sign boxing and one of the most eye catching bouts on that card was the opening round win scored by 19 year old Jin Sasaki (8-0, 7) against Shun Akaiwa (5-2-1, 3). The bout lasted around 45 seconds, with Sasaki putting on arguably his best performance so far and stopping the JBC ranked Akaiwa in very, very impressive fashion.
With that bout now viewed, re-viewed, and viewed again we thought we'd share some of our take aways from the bout. 1-A-Sign Boxing's presentation is solid! Okay we start this by talking about the presentation and not the fight, but bear with us as it's certainly relevant here. The whole event was presented very nice, despite being very dark. The lights weren't focused on the crowd but instead on the fighters, hiding the fact that there was only a small crowd, the commentary for the event worked nicely and added the occasion and the stream quality was clear and clean through out. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that A-Sign have live streamed one of their own events and the way they did it was really solid. Yes there are issues that can be picked at, such as reusing music for introductions through the show, but overall a very nice presentation with a multi-camera set up. The commentators didn't talk for the sake of talking, and the the focus was on the in ring action. If, or rather when, A-Sign do this again we would like to see them add replays post-fight, maybe include some post fight interviews and tweak the onscreen graphics, but that's us being picky. This was very professional, and very nicely presented. Simple but very solid. 2-Power, speed and aggression...Sasaki has em! It's hard to talk too much about a fight that lasts around 45 seconds, but even in that short glimpse of time we saw enough to say that Sasaki has some of the tools needed to go a long way. Straight from the opening bell he was aggressive, exciting, and throwing sharp, hard, fast punches. He looked incredibly quick, incredibly powerful and strong. Whilst there was some real crudeness to his work at times, there was also the brash confidence of "I can take you out". He did look very wild in the opening seconds, but he also showed a really nice jab and the finishing shot, a brilliant left hook, was brutal. Sasaki does need some polishing, but there is already a lot to like about him, and he looks like he has natural tools to have a successful career. 3-Akaiwa was beaten before a punch was thrown With it being a short bout it's hard too read too much into what happened in the ring, but we can't help feeling that Akaiwa was a beaten man before he got into the ring. He looked nervous, was looking down a lot, and seemed to be a man who had accepted that he was going to get beat before a punch was thrown. This probably wasn't helped by Sasaki looking like a confident ball of machismo. Akaiwa seemed to be a fighter who had mentally crumbled in his ring walk. Maybe we are reading too much into things, but it very much felt like Akaiwa, despite being JBC ranked coming into the bout, didn't have the belief in himself that he could win here. Whilst it's easy to look back on what happened and say that, it seemed like it was the case during the short fight as well. Akaiwa threw little more than arm punches, there was little conviction on what he threw and he didn't seem to complain at all at the referee stopping it, despite the fact he was up on his feet after being dropped. 4-Koji Tanaka's count was really weird..and isn't consistent. We've just mentioned how Akaiwa was stood up right when the bout was stopped but that really doesn't explain the finish very well at all. Referee Koji Tanaka picked up the count after the knockdown at the count of 3 and seemed to be giving a consistent count up to the count of 8. Akaiwa had gotten up quickly and it seemed like we would go on. Then Tanaka made a Steve Smoger like decision to delay the "9" slightly and the "10", giving Akaiwa around and extra 2 or 3 seconds. Tanaka then waved off the bout. On first viewing this may look very awkward and weird, and is perhaps unfair to the fighter scoring the knockdown. In reality however this actually gave Tanaka an extra second or two to decide to stop the bout. Making the right decision. It also gave Akaiwa that extra moment to decide if he wanted to continue. Too often we see a fighter "pretend" the wanted to go for it, getting up at 10. The style of count Tanaka gave was awkward but prevent any type of situation like that. We're not sure if it's a normal thing for him, but we liked it and would like to see more referees use that touch of discretion where needed. It's not like he let Akaiwa continue and turn the fight around, but it was an extra second or to decide whether or not Akaiwa needed to be stopped. We'll be looking to see if this is a usual Koji Tanaka thing, or whether it was a case of "this fight hasn't gone long, lets see if I can give the fighter benefit of the doubt", but whatever it was we liked it and it was a good bit of common sense refereeing. Notably it doesn't appear to be a consistent thing with Tanaka, who didn't do the same on August 18th, for a bout between Yuichi Wakita and Kazunori Hirano, but it was very notable and clearly looked deliberate in this bout with Sasaki and Akaiwa so we will keep a close eye on how he issues counts going forward. 5-Boxing is a form of entertainment...and Sasaki gets it! From his entrance and gown to his performance in the ring it was clear that Sasaki gets it! He walks confidently, he's naturally charismatic, catches the attention and oozes the "Come watch me" magnetism that stars need and knows he needs to entertain. This was seen through out his entrance but also the fight. After dropping Akaiwa he was making it clear he desperately wanted Akaiwa to get up so he could finish him in style. Had the referee now ruled Akaiwa was unfit to continue we would have almost certainly been left with a brutal finish. This is a young kid who knows that he needs to sell himself, he needs to entertain and he needs to excite. And he's doing a real good job at exactly that! Last week talented Japanese amateur stand out Ryutaro Nakagaki (1-0, 1) made his professional debut, taking on Shohei Horii (3-6-2, 2) at Korakuen Hall. The bout wasn't shown live but was aired over the weekend on Fuji TV. Since then we have watched the bout back a few times and have made some notes of what we saw.
1-The Ohashi Team are there for each other Fans who have watched this will likely have noticed a lot of red Mizuno shirts in the crowd. These are the Ohashi team who are very much a family supporting each other. Those there to cheer on Nakagaki included the Inoue brothers. We can't help but thing that the stablemates of Nakagaki, and other Ohashi gym fighters, does help the stable with it's unity feel. They sit together, they support each other, they act as a team and they are all there to help each other. This is something we see some other gyms do, but few seem to do it in quite the same was that Ohashi does. 2-Nakagaki looks a natural We've seen a lot of debuts recently of former amateur standouts and we dare say that Nakagaki looked as impressive anyone. He looked razor sharp, used his lead hand to control distance, showed nice footwork, and despite coming forward he was really more of an aggressive counter puncher than an aggressive guy with a high output. He showed a very good boxing brain, looked well schooled, and managed to not only come forward but also draw mistakes and punish them. There is still some tweaks to his style that we would want to see him make, but we were really impressed by how he looked in the ring. 3-Horri wanted to win We seem to say this a lot about Japanese fighters but Horri wasn't there to just get in the ring and take a pay packet. He was there to win, he wanted to win, he wanted to fight. He was just up against someone several levels above him. He didn't want to fiddle and spoil and hold he wanted to win, and believed he could win. At leats until he went down. He seemed to feel confident that he could draw out a chance to win, and that one of his sweeping hooks would land. He was wrong, and he was completely outclassed, but his effort was something we have to value much more than a fighter in another county coming to fall over, or just survive. 4-Nobuhiro Matsubara continues to impress We would all prefer a fight was stopped a little bit too early than too late. On first viewing we felt that Nobuhiro Matsubara stepped in a little bit too early. In reality however the stoppage is not we can complain about. Horrii had been down earlier in the round, he was starting to eat consistent leather and and was proving to be a bit too brave for his own good. He could have been stopped after the knockdown, but the referee seemed to feel he'd give Horri the benefit of the doubt, Horri took more punishment and the doubt was gone. This is the second time in recent weeks we've praised Matsubara and he's quickly showing what a fantastic referee he is. He also seemed to a smile and a look of "I know" from Horri, showing that even the fighter himself acknowledged this was being stopped for his health. We suggest everyone considering becoming a referee looks at how Nobuhiro Matsubara is doing things. 5-Akira Yaegashi is the corner is going to be a big thing More than a week after this fight Akira Yaegashi announced his retirement form in ring competition. He'll remain a figure in boxing however working for Fuji TV, in their Diamond Glove shows, and working as a trainer for the Ohashi gym, including working with Nakagaki. Given his experience, his know how, his career and his style we suspect he's going to be a very, very valuable man in the corner. We didn't see much of him here, though after the bout you could see him on the ring apron talking to Nakagaki, but we suspect we'll see a lot of Yaegashi working the corner and working closely with fighters to pass on his knowledge. He's going to be a very, very important man in developing talent at the Ohashi gym, along his own mentors Koji Matsumoto and Hideyuki Ohashi. Last week the highly touted Keisuke Matsumoto (1-0, 1) scored his debut win, stopping Hironori Miyake (9-10-2, 1) in the 4th round. The bout was then broadcast on Fuji TV this past weekend, in full, as part of Fuji's coverage of the "Phoenix Battle" shows, promoted by Ohashi.
We've rewatched the bout a few times now and have decided to share our take aways from the contest, which is well worthy of a watch if you've not yet seen it. 1-Fuji have gone in big on Matsumoto This should come as no real surprise but Fuji TV and and Ohashi Gym have gone in big on Keisuke Matsumoto and his potential. Despite the fact he was only making his debut the bout was televised in full by Fuji TV, who spent several minutes before broadcasting his fight building him up, giving him time to talk and show training footage of him. The fact his bout got shown in full and the main event in from the card only got shown in digest form is a real sign that Fuji TV view him as a potential star. It should be noted that he featured numerous times on "Mirai Monsters" when he was an amateur, and we suspect that Fuji will continue to see him as a potential star for their channel over the coming years. 2-Miyake came to win On paper a top prospect taking on a guy with a 9-9-2 record is a mismatch, and if this bout was happening in the UK we would typically expect the 9-9-2 guy to be there to fiddle and fidget his way through the bout. We would usually see him holding, spoiling, getting super negative and trying to survive rather than win. The idea of a fighter trying to actually beat a prospect in some countries is a novel concept. Miyake however came to win, and showed plenty of desire. Sadly for him that desire was beaten out of him but not before he dropped Matsumoto with a monstrous right hand. This was the sort of test that advances a prospect quickly, rather than just gets them an easy win. 3-Matsumoto took a while to settle This is something that we noticed rewatching the fight a lot more than we did the first time we watched it. Matsumoto seemed to have a lot of nervous energy in the first two rounds. He was throwing some extremely silly shots in the first round, he failed to make the most of his jab, and he was caught several times with his hands down, including the knockdown. We're not sure whether this was an issue with learning on the job, or just not not settling very quickly. When he did settle, in round 3, boy did he look good. The issues we saw in the first 2 rounds were completely gone in rounds 3 and 4. This was really an impressive turn around and we dare say that if Matsumoto from rounds 3 and 4 turn up next time he's going to really shine. He showed some brilliant aggressive boxing, a fantastic jab and the tools to go a long, long way in the future. 4-Down but not a bad chin The potential elephant in the room is the fact that Matsumoto was dropped by a guy with just a single stoppage in 20 bouts. On paper that is a concern. In reality however we need to look at the actual knockdown again. When we do that we see it wasn't so much a chin issue but more of a rookie mistake, with Matsumoto getting greedy offensively and showing some real naivety in terms of his defense. The knockdown came from a single shot, straight on the chin whilst pulling straight back with his guard completely open. He wasn't hurt, despite how clean the shot was, and he looked completely with it when the bout resumed. Yes he was down, but we don't think he has a bad chin. In fact if anything we link this back to #3, he hadn't settled and was making mistakes, rather than any sort of chin issue. 5-Miyake is a tough nut! Despite some early success for Miyake the bout became a painful one for him, with Matsumoto landing hard shots to his head and body. Despite those shots Miyake never really looked badly hurt. He was having the fight beaten out of him, and taking shots clean, but never looked like a man who was going to go down. We've seen opponents for prospects go down the first time they were caught, and Miyake had chances to "go down bravely", but instead remained up right until the referee decided enough was enough. By that point Matsumoto was zoned in and landing at will, but even the clean power shots weren't enough to drop Miyake. A genuine tough guy who we think would be a good opponent for plenty of established domestic opponents. We've all heard of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, and we've decided to put our spin on things with "Six degrees of separation" looking to connect Asian fighters you may never have assumed were connected! Today we connect former Thai world champion Srisaket Sor Rungvisai to former Korean world champion Young Kyun Park. Just as ground rules, we're not doing the more basic "A beat B who beat C who beat D" type of thing, but instead we want to link fighters in different ways. As a result we will limit A fought B connections, and try to get more varied connections together, as you'll see here! We also know there are often shorter routes to connect fighters, but that's not always the most interesting way to connect them. 1-Popular Thai warrior Srisaket Sor Rungvisai made his name worldwide in 2017, when he upset Roman Gonzalez, twice, to win and defend the WBC Super Flyweight title. Those wins may have put Srisaket on the radar of fans globally, but actually only began his second reign as the champion, with the Thai having previously won the title when he beat Yota Sato. Another 2-time WBC Super Flyweight champion was the controversial Masamori Tokuyama, a Japanese born Korean fighter who fought under the North Korean flag. 2-The talented Masamori Tokuyama made his debut on September 19th 1994 on a show in Osaka. Another fighter who made his debut on that very same show was future world title challenger Hidenobu Honda, who would challenge for world titles at Flyweight and Super Flyweight. 3-Another bout that Hidenobu Honda was involved in, along with his failed world title bout, was a 2008 clash with with the fantastic Alexander Bakhtin. Bakhtin beat Honda in 7 rounds, giving Honda his first stoppage loss, whilst continuing his rise through the ranks. 4-Whilst Alexander Bakhtin failed to win a world title he did manage to win the Japanese, and OPBF Bantamweight titles along with the WBA International and IBF Super Bantamweight titles. Another man who held the OPBF Bantamweight title was Japanese legend Hozumi Hasegawa, who made 3 defenses of the belt before going on to become a 3-weight world champion. 5-One of the three world titles that Hozumi Hasegawa won was the WBC Super Bantamweight title. That was the third world title that Hasegawa won, and the final belt he won before his retirement, and a belt he didn't actually defend. Another fighter who won that title was Royal Kobayashi, who also failed to make a successful defense and in fact lost the belt only weeks after winning it. 6-The WBC Super Bantamweight title wasn't the only belt that Royal Kobayashi won, another was the OPBF Featherweight title, a title that was also won by Korean warrior Young Kyun Park, who later won the WBA Featherweight title in 1991 and made 8 rapid fire defenses before losing the belt less than 3 years later. Last week we looked at Akira Ohigashi in our 5 Midweek Facts series and we mentioned the name of Hitoshi Kamiyama during that article. Today we thought we'd follow up the Ohigashi piece by looking at Kamiyama himself.
For those who go into these articles looking to just learn things, Hitoshi Kamiyama (32-2-1, 20) was a Japanese Light Middleweight who fought between 1986 and 1995. He's best known internationally for his 1992 loss to Julio Cesar Vasquez in Argentina, in a WBA world title fight but domestically he dominated. Kamiyama went unbeaten in 24 straight bouts in Japan, and went 32-1-1 in fights at home! With that said let us bring you 5 Midweek Facts about Hitoshi Kamiyama! 1-Rather amazingly Kamiyama was the first man to be crowned a Japanese champion in the Heisei era of Japanese history. The era began on January 8th 1989, following the end of the Showa era, and saw Kamiyama stopping Eiju Otake for the Japanese Light Middleweight title. The bout was one of 3 title bouts to take place on the day, with Eiji Kikuzaki and Yoshifumi Kitajima fighting to a draw for the vacant Japanese Light Middleweight title and Takeyuki Akagi beating Masahiro Takagi in the main event, for the Japanese Super Featherweight title. 2-Rather oddly Kamiyama's rivalry with Hiroyuki Yoshino finished with the men going 1-1-1. They drew in the 1986 Rookie of the Year, Yoshino won the second bout the men had with a 3rd round KO to retain the Japanese Welterweight title whilst Kamiyama would score a 7th round TKO over over Yoshino in their 1991 bout. Interestingly the third bout saw the two men entering as Japanese champions. At the time Kamiyama was enjoying his legendary Japanese Light Middleweight title reign whilst Yoshino was the Japanese Welterweight champion. Neither title was on the line as the men fought above the Light Middleweight limit, at a contracted 155lbs. This was the first time in 7 years that two Japanese champions faced off in a non-title bout. 3-During his career Kamiyama set a then Japanese record of 20 defenses of a national title, a record that ran until it was beaten in 2000 by Rick Yoshimura, who recorded 22 defenses of the Japanese Lightweight title. Kamiyama's record still stands as the most defenses of the Japanese Light Middleweight title, more than 25 years after his retirement. 4-In September 1992 Kamiyama beat American fighter Pat Lawlor. That was the same Pat Lawlor who had stopped Roberto Duran 18 months earlier and had beaten Wilfred Benitez in 1990. Whilst Lawlor was no world beater, which was we learned when he was dominated and stopped by John David Jackson, it's still a notable win for Kamiyama. In fact this is his only win against a non-Japanese fighter. 5-Kamiyama took part in his retirement ceremony on August 14th 1995. Whilst that's interesting on hand what makes even more interesting is the fact that on the same show as that ceremony his stablemate Tatsufumi Ito won the title that Kamiyama had monopolised during his reign. Ito beat Akira Ohigashi with a decision win on the show. Sadly for Ito his reign was a short one and he would lose the belt to Ohigashi 7 months later. It's been a while since we've been able to share the "Best of Boxing Raise" but after the month we've just had we feel it's an ideal time to bring back this series, and celebrate how much boxing has been added to the service this past month. We do that knowing the service has had one of the best KO's of the year and one of the best bouts of the year in recent weeks!
For those unaware Boxing Raise is a brilliant little Japanese subscription service, run by the people behind the DANGAN shows, and combined video on demand with live streams to give us an excellent outlet for non-televised Japanese domestic bouts. At around $9 it's a fantastic value service and is something we suggest all fans wanting to get a deeper knowledge of Japanese domestic bouts considers. Of course August didn't feel like the biggest months for boxing, but we are now seeing regular new and fresh content being added to Boxing Raise, and we saw their first live show since boxing returned to Japan, and it was a good one. With that in mind we really do feel like the month is one worthy of sharing some of the service's highlights As with our previous "Best of Boxing Raise" article all the fights featured here can be accessed by subscribers by logging into Boxing Raise and adding the "movie/####" to "https://boxingraise.com/". Rookie Brawl - Shota Tanaka (2-0, 1) Vs Shunta Terai (2-5-1, 2) [/movie/8214/] Back on August 3rd,in front of an empty Korakuen Hall, Shota Tanaka and Shunta Terai battled in East Japan Rookie of the Year bout, and put on a real brawl! This wasn't high quality but was hotly competitive, exciting, and thrilling back and forth. If you want some thrilling low level action this is well worth 15 minutes of your time! Good night! - Tsubasa Murata (2-1, 1) Vs Yuya Miyazaki (1-1, 1) [/movie/8252/] We stay with Rookie of the Year action for this recommendation, which came in a Central Japan Rookie of the Year bout between Tsubasa Murata and Yuya Miyazaki. This was less of an action fight and is instead more worth watching due to the finish, which is one of the best KO's we've seen this year. This was a sensational finish and one worth watching the full bout for. Blink and you miss it! - Kosuke Hayashi (0-0) vs Kanta Yamauchi (0-2-1) [/movie/8240/] Only got 2 minutes? Then we have the fight for you! This was a short, brutal and intense war between the debuting Kosuke Hayashi and the previously win-less Kenta Yamauchi. The bout really is a blink and you miss it bout that just sees the two men tosses bombs at each other from the opening bell. Short, exciting, and very much bite sized! Blink and You miss it 2! - Kazuki Terasaki (2-1-1, 2) vs Shori Umezu (0-0) [/movie/8242/] Of course it wasn't just Hayashi and Yamauchi who decided to have a shoot out this month, and Kazuki Terasaki and Shori Umezu also gave us a shoot out. This was two young men fighting like they had been told they had 1 round to shine, and both just unloaded on each other. This was entertaining violence from the off and a truly brilliant fight! Regional champion is crowned - Ryota Yamauchi (6-1, 5) vs Satoru Todaka (10-3-4, 4) [/movie/8333/] In the only title bout on Boxing Raise this past month we saw Ryota Yamauchi take on Satoru Todaka for the vacant WBO Asia Pacific Flyweight title. This was, for all intents, the most significant bout on the service this month, and it also turned out to be a pretty fan friendly bout, and a great chance to see one of the most promising Flyweights show what he can do. This is again a shorter bout, but one well worthy of watching if you use the service. WAAARRR! - Daisuke Watanabe (10-4-2, 6) vs Shingo Kusano (13-8-1, 5) [/movie/8359/] The best bout of the month, at least in terms of Asian boxing, was actually shown on Boxing Raise and saw Daisuke Watanabe and Shino Kusano go to war in the final of the Hajime No Ippo 30th Anniversary tournament. This was 8 rounds that gave us everything. This had nice boxing early on, with both men showing good skills, and thrilling back and forth action on the inside later in the bout. This had everything we could want from a tournament final. This is the true stand out fight of the month and the one that is worth the 40 or so minutes it'll take to watch. A genuinely brilliant bout that got better and better as it went on! |
Thinking Out East
With this site being pretty successful so far we've decided to open up about our own views and start what could be considered effectively an editorial style opinion column dubbed "Thinking Out East" (T.O.E). Archives
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