Nakatani knocks out Sor Chitpattana, Cafu upsets Tanaka, more

Junto Nakatani stopped Petch Sor Chitpattana in six, plus we have a new world champ at super flyweight.

A quick rundown of the action we saw today in Tokyo.

Junto Nakatani TKO-6 Petch Sor Chitpattana

Nakatani (29-0, 22 KO) retains his WBC bantamweight title with another terrific winning performance. Sor Chitpattana (76-2, 53 KO) came in here aiming for the upset, wasn’t just rolling over, but Nakatani is a P4P guy and Sor Chitpattana simply isn’t.

Nakatani unleashed a wicked flurry of punches in round six to drop the Thai challenger, and just as it looked like Sor Chitpattana might survive the round, he drilled him again, with referee Laurence Cole rightly waving it off there, as the underdog was really hurt.

But part of what got Petch caught again is he came roaring after that first knockdown; if he was going to go down there, he was going to go down swinging, and he did. A hugely brave and game effort from the underdog, but Nakatani marches on and continues to move toward a potential move up to 122 lbs and a super fight with Naoya Inoue.

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Tenshin Nasukawa UD-10 Gerwin Asilo

A solid outing for Nasukawa, the 26-year-old former kickboxing star who improves to 5-0 (2 KO) with a decision win over Asilo (9-1, 4 KO), a 23-year-old from the Philippines who gave this a real good go but just didn’t have enough success.

There was a knockdown ruled in the ninth round that maybe should have been called a slip, but obviously it wasn’t the difference-maker.

Nasukawa picked up a regional WBO belt here, which matters in terms of their rankings at bantamweight. He’s young and has time, but the most likely thing is probably him going for a world title in the next 18-24 months so long as he keeps winning. You don’t want to wait too long, or play with fire too many times, and also it’s not like he’s going to develop into some master boxing stylist. He’s always going to have a kickboxer’s style at heart, but he’s also awkward, a good athlete, and can probably sharpen up some key things that make him even more dangerous than he is now.

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Phumelele Cafu SD-12 Kosei Tanaka

An upset here, as Cafu lifts the WBO super flyweight title with the very close split decision win over Kosei Tanaka, a fifth round knockdown of the defending titleholder ultimately making the difference, as this would have come back a majority draw otherwise.

Cafu (11-0-3, 8 KO) won two cards of 114-113 to take the win and the title, while Tanaka (20-2, 11 KO) took a 114-113 card himself.

This was a terrific, high-level fight between two guys whose styles meshed wonderfully, and this is one where you really would like to see a rematch, because it was legitimately as close as those cards make it sound.

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Anthony Olascuaga NC-1 Jonathan Gonzalez

A world title fight that never got to get going, as Gonzalez (28-3-1, 14 KO) suffered a cut on the eyebrow due to a clash of heads, and when he told the referee he couldn’t see moments after, that was that.

Official time of the fight being called off was 2:20 of round one. Olascuaga (7-1, 5 KO) retains his WBO flyweight title.

Personally, think the 33-year-old Gonzalez ran the math in his head and realized that cut was in a lousy spot and put him at major risk of going to the cards after four completed rounds, possibly down on the cards and not having the time to get into the second half, which probably was a big part of their plan. He’s not an early knockout guy. Not endorsing it as a fan or saying I agree with it or whatever, just think he made a veteran decision in the situation he had at hand.