May 1, 2015
TOKYO, JAPAN
Former Olympic middleweight gold medalist, WBC#7/IBF#12 Ryota Murata (7-0, 5 KOs), 161.75, scored his career-best stoppage over WBO#15 Douglas Damiao Ataide (13-2-1, 6 KOs), 161, from Brazil, over ten frames in the main event on Friday in Tokyo, Japan.
Murata returned his original peek-a-boo style with which he had gained the gold medal in London, and almost perfectly blocked Ataide’s busy combinations and retaliated with heavier punches to the face and the belly. Ataide accelerated his attack to have Murata on the defensive in the third and fourth, but the Japanese, five years his senior at 29, was patient enough to wait for openings to fight back with his powerful rights. Just after the fatal fifth started, Murata exploded a very strong right to the neck under the ear, dropping Ataide on the deck. The Brazilian was on the feet, but Murata furiously swarmed over him and decked him again with a fusillade of punches to have the referee Yuji Fukuchi declare a well-timed halt. It seems the best stoppage that Murata displayed after he began fighting in the paid ranks in August 2013.
Formerly two-class champ Akira Yaegashi (21-5, 11 KOs), 115, returned to ring warfare and showed a breath-taking TKO victory over Thailand’s Songsaenglek Phoswangym (18-12, 5 KOs), 115, at 2:05 of the second round. Yaegashi looked very sharp in countering the taller Thailander with a solid right to floor him in the closing seconds of the opening canto. Songsaenglek had a narrow escape, but the second session witnessed Yaegashi’s right cross over his left hand stretch him with a thud with the ref immediately calling a TKO without counting over the flattened pancake.
Promoter: Teiken Promotions.
(5-1-2015)