May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015
TOKYO, JAPAN
Japanese southpaw, IBF#3 Ryosuke Iwasa (19-1, 12 KOs) (right photo) will face #4 Lee Haskins (31-3, 13 KOs) for an IBF interim bantamweight championship in Bristol, UK, on June 13. Since IBF titlist Randy Caballero suffered such a serious ankle injury that he will be unavailable for many months and the IBF headquarters sanctioned the interim title bout between Iwasa and Haskins. Iwasa, handled by ex-WBA 115-pound ruler Celes Shoji Kobayashi since his junior high school days, tasted a sole bitter setback when he was stopped by future WBC bantam ruler Shinsuke Yamanaka in the tenth and final session of his ninth pro bout in March 2011. Ironically was it a very fatefully significant crossroad for the contemporary promising 118-pounders as the victor Yamanaka went to acquire the vacant WBC throne to retain it no less than eight times, while the loser Iwasa had to take a roundabout way and wait for four years before his first world title shot.
Iwasa, a shifty southpaw boxer, won the vacant Japanese bantam belt renounced by his conqueror Yamanaka in November 2011, and then wrested the OPBF belt by chalking up a fifth-round stoppage of Hiroki Shiino in 2013. Iwasa kept the OPBF diadem once prior to his relinquishment to aim for a world belt, but it was apparent that the difference between Yamanaka and Iwasa was big enough and Iwasa, at the corssroads, didn’t seem to have been well-motivated since his only defeat.
Time is now. Iwasa, this time, has been devoting all himself to a strenuous training under the tutelage of his manager/trainer Kobayashi. His motivation comes from his ambition, which is to avenge his bitter experience in a rematch with Yamanaka. “I wish to win the IBF interim belt at first, and then the legitimate IBF throne. Then I hope to fight Yamanaka again to wipe off the nightmare.”
Haskins, the British veteran six years older at 31 than the Japanese, is also a southpaw battler who boasts of a meaningful victory over future IBF titleholder Stuart Hall with the vacant European bantam belt at stake in 2012. Furthermore, Haskins has lately scored five wins straight to show a rising tide prior to facing the man from the Rising Sun. He is not an easy opposition for Iwasa at all. Iwasa will leave for UK in the first week of June. Bon Voyage.
(5-24-2015)