By Joe Koizumi
Photos by Naoki Fukuda

We might not call it an upset, as a champion barely kept his belt by a draw with a challenger who had been a prohibitive prefight favorite. But we witnessed a dramatic processing against the odds for the challenger.

IBF #14 Taiki Minamoto (16-5-1, 13 KOs), 126, dropped IBF #4/WBC #9 mandatory challenger Reiya Abe (19-2-1, 9 KOs), 125.75, in the first and second rounds, gamely put on a gallant performance, withstood Abe’s retaliations in later rounds and barely retained his belt by a majority draw (94-94 twice, 95-94 for Abe) over ten hard-fought rounds on Wednesday in Tokyo, Japan.

It was very surprising that the self-proclaimed southpaw genius Abe hit the deck with a well-timed right to the button each once in the first two rounds. After the first half gone, the official tallies on the open scoring system were all 48-45 in favor of the underdog, that is, the defending champ.

Moving to-and-fro and outpunching with precision, Abe, in the second half, swept almost all rounds but the eighth, when the bloodied champ connected with a vicious right that had Abe staggering to the ropes, without which he would have hit the deck without doubt. In the second half, the champ took only the eighth and the challenger four rounds, so Abe could only accumulate three points that just overcame his early deficits on points but couldn’t win more points than the champ.

Abe had entered the world top ten by upsetting then rated three-time world challenger Satoshi Hosono and defeated future WBO Asia Pacific 130-pound ruler Joe Noynay both in 2017, but couldn’t deck his first attempt to win the national belt against people’s high expectations.

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