By Joe Koizumi
Photos by Naoki Fukuda

Unbeaten WBC light flyweight champ Shiro Ken (13-0, 7 KOs), 107.5, easily kept his belt when he sank former champ Ganigan Lopez (29-8, 18 KOs), 107.5, a Mexican old soldier at 36, with a single body shot for the count at 1:58 of the second session on Friday in Tokyo, Japan.

Ken, making his third defense, had wrested the WBC belt by a majority nod (115-113 twice, 114-114) over Lopez here a year ago.

In the first round they probed each other with jabs and feints only to see few mix-ups with the champ just once connecting with a left-right combination to the face.

The second witnessed Ken, ten years his junior at 26, caught the Mexican lefty with a solid right to the body, and Lopez fell on all fours with the ref Vic Drakulich tolling the fatal ten. The victorious champ said, “Last night my father advised me to attack with a right shot to the midsection. That paid off. I thank for his suggestion as I didn’t expect such a quick finish.”

Originally scheduled to face Lopez on the undercard of WBA middleweight champ Ryota Murata’s first defense on April 15, Shiro, then having suffered a knee pain, was fortunate enough to have the revancha (rematch) postponed by forty days that eventually enabled the champ to recover from the injury. Unfortunate was Daigo Higa, then WBC flyweight ruler, who appeared on the Murata undercard with only two months and eleven days from his previous bout on February 4, couldn’t make weight only to forfeit his belt on the scale and then suffered his first defeat by a TKO at the hand of Nicaraguan Cristofer Rosales. We now see a difference of fate in Higa and Ken.

The champ, whose real name is Kenshiro Teraji, displayed his improvement thanks to some 150 sparring sessions in the Philippines in coping with a southpaw foe as shown by his quick blitzkrieg. He is still young and will become better under his father/trainer Hisashi’s tutelage.