April 5, 2008
TOKYO, JAPAN
It was the very first show held at the newly established JCB Hall (just five minutes from the Korakuen Hall), the capacity of which is some 3,000. The main event was a sensational confrontation of the OPBF and national champs, both unbeaten, not only with both belts at stake but with the right to be the WBA official challenger on the line.
Unbeaten Japanese feather champ, WBA#4/WBC#11 Takahiro Aoh (16-0-1, 8 KOs), 126, cried as he believed in a unanimous victory, when it was announced that he was held to a controversial unanimous draw (114-114 twice and 115-115) by OPBF ruler, WBA#2/WBC#9 Hiroyuki Enoki (27-0-2, 19 KOs), 126, over twelve rounds on Saturday in Tokyo, Japan.
All the tickets had been sold out because of peoplefs high expectations, against which it resulted in a lousy fight with each displaying only jabs throughout the contest. But Aoh, a 23-year-old southpaw, seemed to have controlled the game with his stinging right jabs against the flat-footed OPBF champ. The faster Aoh caught Enoki with a solid left uppercut to almost stun him in the ninth. Enoki, 28, just kept stalking the shifty footworker with less accurate left jabs without throwing any right shots.
In a companion title go, WBC#4/WBA#8 Japanese super-bantam champ Akifumi Shimoda (18-1, 8 KOs), 122, repeated his triumph over ex-champ Daisuke Yamanaka (21-4, 14 KOs), 121.5, and kept his belt in his third defense, as Shimoda floored the challenger with a southpaw left in the second and pounded out a unanimous verdict (99-90, 98-91 and 97-92) over ten heats. Shimoda looked wilder and more round-house than in their first encounter in which he had wrested the national belt from Yamanaka, but outspeeded and outhustled the game ex-champ with his continual aggression.
Surprisingly, previously unbeaten Carlos Linares (2-1, 2 KOs), 157.5, a Japan-based Venezuelan of the reigning WBC feather ruler Jorge Linares, suddenly ran out of gas and was halted by unheralded Korean Pilsung Oh (5-5, 4 KOs), 158.25, at 0:27 of the sixth and final session.
Promoter: Teiken Promotions.
(4-5-08)