On Thursday afternoon (EST time) from Japan, Kazuto Ioka defeated Francisco Rodrguez via a unanimous decision to retain his WBO junior bantamweight championship
Rodriguez was the mandatory contender for Ioka and formerly held the minimumweight championship and gave Ioka all that he wanted in a fight that all three judges scored 116-112 for the champion.
I saw it a little closer for Ioka at 115-113, who made his third successful title defense and his second mandatory in a row against a champion moving up in weight (his last defense was against Kosei Tanaka).
I gave Rodriguez three of the first four rounds and it appeared that Rodriguez was on his way to an upset, but Ioka took over thereafter, and although Rodriguez was competitive Ioka was the clear winner.
Ioka would be a good fit against other fighters at the top of the division, but with the WBA and WBC titles tied up with the Juan Francisco Estrada-Roman Gonzalez third fight and the winner mandated to face the winner of Srisaket Sor Rungvisai-Carlos Cuadras match, Ioka's best option could be a unification with the remaining champion in IBF boss Jerwin Ancajas, who lacks other options as well.
As for Rodriguez, he fought very well and I wouldn't be surprised to see him in another title fight in the future.
Ramon Malpica and I each scored two points for the Ioka victory to change the total to 120-106
The two fights for the boxing challenge are both from Matchroom/DAZN with a main event that is a rematch of a candidate for upset of the year for 2021.
Josh Warrington had vacated his IBF featherweight title rather than face Kid Galahad in a rematch that few wanted to see in hopes of meeting then-WBA minor champion Xu Can (Can would be upset in his next fight by Leigh Wood) but took his scheduled title defense against unheralded Mauricio Lara as a stay-busy bout and went ahead without a title to defend.
Lara knocked Warrington down in the fourth round, delivered a dreadful beating ,and then finished him off with a one punch KO in the ninth round.
Warrington exercised his right to a rematcb and it looks like he is betting his career on reversing the result but he has a problem.
Warrington needs to come forward and wear down his opponent down but to do that against Lara means that Warrington is going to go towards the superior puncher.
This seems like an awful matchup in styles for Warrington and unless Warrington can literally force Lara to fight off his back foot and not allow him to use his power, this looks to be a very difficult fight again for Warrington.
The co-feature is a postponed fight from a month ago with Conor Benn moving towards to the top ten against division gatekeeper Adrian Granados in a welterweight pairing.
Benn, the son of former super middleweight champion Nigel Benn, defeated his best opponent in his last fight with a first round knockout of veteran Samuel Vargas.
Granados is just 1-2-1 in his last four fights but has fought many top ten opponents in his career.
It's unknown how much Granados has left at this stage of a career that has seen him take plenty of punishment but he should still be an interesting test for Benn, who hasn't really been in with an opponent that may be able to take his offense.
In the boxing challenge, I lead Ramon Malpica 120-106
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