Koki Kameda retains his WBA World bantamweight gold against Nouldy Manakane – Boxing News
Koki Kameda, the WBA World bantamweight champion, successfully defended his gold for the fourth consecutive time against the more experienced Nouldy Manakane, the former PABA bantamweight champion, in a 12-round skirmish held on April 4, 2012.
The bout headlined the event promoted by Kameda Promotions and the ring for the Wednesday night pay-per-view was stretched at Yokohama Arena situated in Kanagawa, Japan.
Koki, 25, was entering in his career’s 29th bout and boasted a resume of 27 wins with just one loss against Pongsaklek Wonjongkam, a battle which had WBC flyweight gold up for grabs.
The young Japanese proud was entering the ring with odds bit against him since his opponent had substantial experience in his gear. Koki, who currently resides at the fifth seat in the world rankings, grabbed the bantamweight gold after collecting an impressive
unanimous decision win against Alexander Munoz and since then has defended it successfully against Daniel Diaz, David De La Mora, and Mario Macias.
His opponent, on the other hand, boasted a record of 24 wins in 35 bouts. Though he did not exhibit a decent win percentage yet he had proudly held many titles and nailed much heavy duty names.
Nouldy, widely known as ‘Noldi Manakae’, is Indonesia’s number one bantamweight and has collected just 15 wins by knockout as compared to Kameda’s 17. Apart from the experience factor, Koki overshadowed Manakane in various significant facets.
Koki possessed the height advantage in addition to the knockout one and above all recently fought men with considerable experience. Nouldy, on the contrary, fought men who were either rookies or novices in the sport of boxing and acted literally as Indonesian’s
punching bag.
The bout kicked off and the whole Japanese crowd were shocked to see their man throwing the least fists and performing in an extremely questionable way. During the whole bout, Koki was unable to perform energetically and threw almost half the number of jabs
generated by Nouldy.
One thing, though, was in Koki’s favour to some extent as his every punch was well targeted and precisely connected Nouldy’s head and body. The judges after the 12-round wild ride allocated 117-110, 118-110, and 115-113 in Koki’s favour.
Despite the blurry and sluggish performance, Koki’s win extremely irritated Nouldy who with intense rage shared his grievance and said, “I thought I won or drew at worst. I was surprised to see such a wide margin as 118-110. I knew Kameda didn’t like my
body punches, so aimed at this midsection all the way, which paid well.”
No matter what happens, Koki has now successfully defended his gold, again, for the fourth time but graciously accepted that his performance was his career’s worst one. Manakane now has 24 wins, 11 losses and one draw in a total 36 skirmishes and the Japanese
sensation has collected his career’s 28th win.
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