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Tomoki Kameda, Japan’s “Little Mexican,” and the Glory Days of Japanese Boxing

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Tomoki Kameda, Japan’s “Little Mexican,” and the Glory Days of Japanese Boxing

This is a golden era for Japanese boxing. Japanese fighters own all the meaningful hardware at 118 and 122 pounds. That’s eight belts in all, four of which are the property of undisputed super bantamweight kingpin Naoya Inoue, the first Japanese boxer in history to sit atop the most prestigious of the pound-for-pound lists.

Japan is also represented among the title-holders at 115 (Kosei Tanaka) and 112 (Seigo Yuri Akul) and has a potential featherweight title-holder in the mix in the form of Tomoki Kameda whose victory over Lerati Dlamini this past weekend was framed as an eliminator, making him next in line (in theory) to challenge the newly-crowned IBF featherweight champion Angelo Leo.

Kameda (pictured) has been around the block. Eleven years have passed since he won the WBO world bantamweight title in the Philippines with a unanimous decision over Namibia’s previously undefeated Paulus Ambunda and nine years have passed since he lost the strap in his third title defense, out-pointed by England’s Jamie McDonnell on a Matchroom card in Hidalgo, Texas.

McDonnell was the “A side” from the promoter’s want, but Kameda, who has had one of the most interesting careers of any active boxer, had the crowd in his corner. Hidalgo sits smack against the Mexican border. Virtually everyone there identifies as Latino or Hispanic.

In boxing, the term “Mexican style” is somewhat synonymous to “fan-friendly.” It suggests a high-pressure fighter whose best defense is a relentless offense. Tomoki Kameda took it a step further. At age 17, when he decided to turn pro, he took up residence in Mexico City. Fifteen of his first 23 pro fights were in Mexico, hence his nickname, “El Mexicanito,” a curious handle for a fighter from Osaka.

Kameda, who turned 33 last month, boasts a record of 42-4 (23 KOs). His losses were inflicted by McDonnell, twice, by Rey Vargas in a failed bid for Vargas’s super bantamweight title, and by the aforementioned Dlamini, a South African who upset Kameda in their first encounter. Both Kameda vs. Dlamini bouts, both staged in Japan, ended in split decisions, but there was no controversy when Kameda turned the tables in the rematch. The 116-111 tally submitted by visiting Nevada judge Robert Hoyle was considered the most accurate.

It’s a fair guess that a match between Kameda and Angelo Leo, should it transpire, would be held in Leo’s adopted hometown of Las Vegas. Kameda, for all his globetrotting, has fought in Las Vegas only once – back in 2014 on a Showtime card at the MGM Grand – but has spent many hours training there under the tutelage of Ismael Salas.

Over the next seven weeks, the Japanese boxing scene will be white-hot. The action begins on Tuesday of next week when Naoya Inoue defends his belts against TJ Doheny (26-4, 20 KOs). Hailing from Australia by way of Ireland, Doheny, a 37-year-old southpaw, has never been stopped.

There’s a first time for everything, as they say, and TJ Doheny’s first time will come on Sept. 3. (The bout will air on ESPN+, the capstone of a five-fight livestream that will commence in the wee hours of the morning in the U.S., specifically 2:30 am ET.)

On Sunday and Monday, Oct. 13 and 14, there will be back-to-back cards at Tokyo’s Ariake Arena.

On Oct. 13, Naoya’s younger brother Takuma Inoue (20-1, 5 KOs) defends his WBA 118-pound title against countryman Seiya Tsutsumi (11-0-2, KOs). Plus Kenshiro Teraji (23-1,14 KOs) moves up in weight to fight for the vacant WBA flyweight title with Nicaraguan veteran Cristofer Rosales (37-6, 22 KOs) in the opposite corner.

Oct. 14 marks the return of WBO bantamweight champion Junto Nakatani who is widely considered the best boxer from Japan not named Naoya Inoue. Nakatani (28-0, 21 KOs) is matched against mysterious Thai southpaw Tasana Salapat, aka Petch Sor Chitpattana, aka Petch CP Freshmart (76-1, 53 KOs). The supporting bouts include a match between WBO 118-pound title-holder Kosei Tanaka (20-1, 11 KOs) and South Africa’s obscure Phumelele Cafu (10-0-3, 8 KOs).

Looking ahead to 2025, there’s a good chance that Nakatani, who is tall for his weight class, will move up a notch to challenge the baby-faced “Monster,” Naoya Inoue. Barring any slip-ups along the way, that would be the biggest domestic showdown in the annals of Japanese boxing and something more. It would arouse the interest of boxing fans around the world, indicative of the heightened status of boxing in the Land of the Rising Sun.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

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Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian.  (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

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To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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