Can Hiraoka and Sasaki Progress Further?
By Teodoro Medina Reynoso
PhilBoxing.com
Fri, 06 Sep 2024
Hiraoka (L) and Sasaki (R).
It's a fact that Japanese boxers are the lords of the lower weights with Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani as 1-2 punch.
Inoue recently reaffirmed his standing as among the top three pound for pound boxers in the world by stopping his fourth straight world class opponent in retaining his undisputed super bantamweight championship. Meanwhile, Nakatani holds the most prestigious belt at bantamweight and is largely considered as the best among the Japanese world titlists at 118 lbs.
In the undercards of Inoue's most recent title defense against TJ Doheny, two fellow Japanese fighters gave Japan something to look forward to in the heavier weights by winning impressively and improving their world standings.
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Andy Hiraoka boxed intelligently in the early rounds before ramping up his power in stopping Venezuelan veteran Ismael Barroso in the ninth round to win their scheduled 12 rounds world junior welterweight title eliminator.
The WBA has upgraded the fight for its interim world title at 140 lbs making Hiraoka an interim world titlist with the first bid on regular champion Jose Valenzuela.
The undefeated Hiraoka is the first Japanese world champion at 140 lbs, albeit an interim one, since Akinobu Hiranaka's WBA title winning upset knockout of the noted Puerto Rican Edwin Rosario in the early 90s. He joins a thin line of Japanese world junior welterweight titlists beginning with Takeshi "Paul" Fujii who became WBC-WBA champion in the late 1960s and included Tsuyoshi Hamada who reigned briefly as WBA titlist in 1986-87.
Hiraoka 28, was born in Yokohama to a Ghanaian father and Japanese mother and currently totes an impressive 24-0 record with 19 KO wins.
Though Barroso was his only prominent opponent thus far at the loaded junior welterweight, Hiraoka has a fair chance to wrest the regular title from Valenzuela who already has two losses at lightweight and has just won the WBA super lightweight crown via upset split decision over Isaac Cruz. Especially if the fight will be held in Japan.
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Another Japanese fighter bidding to create waves in the higher weights is Jin Sasaki who just also recently defended his OPBF welterweight title while adding the WBO Asia Pacific belt by a smashing seventh round knockout of Australian Qamil Balla in the same undercard.
Sasaki, just 23 years old, has an 18-1-1 record with 17 KO victories. His lone loss was to Andy Hiraoka in a JBC junior welterweight title fight in which he was weakened by the rigors of trying to meet the 140 lbs weight limit. He was held to a draw by another undefeated Japanese Kotaro Sekine in another fight at 140 before he moved up to the welterweights.
Sasaki's efforts have not gone unnoticed as all major boxing bodies have him in their top 5 contenders list with the WBO ranking him the highest at #3. This gives him the chance to vie for any of the titles at the welterweight division left wide open by Terrence Crawford's move up in weight.
Based on current rankings by the boxrec where he is also listed as #3, Sasaki has a fair chance of becoming world welterweight champion against either WBC titlist Mario Barrios who has already two losses or WBA interim belt holder Brian Norman Jr. who although undefeated has no prominent names in his resume.
The odds nonetheless are against Sasaki as no Japanese has ever won a world championship at 147 lbs.
But then, we cannot underestimate the advantage of fighting in one's country before one's supporting countrymen. As Inoue himself said, Japanese boxing is in a golden period.
The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.
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