(Photo: Sumio Yamada) By Jim Dower: 36-year-old former two division world champion Vic Darchinyan (37-5-1, 27 KO’s) suffered his second consecutive loss on Friday night losing to unbeaten WBC bantamweight champion Shinsuke Yamanaka (16-0-2, 11 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision at the Tokyo International Forum, in Tokyo, Japan. The final judges’ scores were 116-112, 116-112 and 117-111, all for Yamanaka.

Darchinyan was loading up with everything, but getting out-boxed by the slick Yamanaka. At bantamweight, Darchinyan doesn’t carry the same kind of power he had at flyweight and super flyweight. He wasn’t able to hurt Yamanaka with any of his shots and was pretty much out of his element once it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to do anything with Yamanaka.

Darchinyan has lost four out of seven fights at bantamweight, and he needs to think hard about whether it’s the smart thing for him to continue to try and fight at this weight or if he somehow get back down to super flyweight or even flyweight where Darchinyan was virtually unbeatable. Since moving up in weight, he’s had mixed results and in hindsight Darchinyan likely would have been much better off had he stuck it out in the lower weights.

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Hasegawa defeats Felix

Former WBC bantamweight and WBC featherweight champion Hozumi Hasegawa (30-4, 13 KO’s) rebounded from a knockout loss to Jhonny Gonzalez and a year layoff to defeat Felipe Carlos Felix (18-1, 10 KO’s) by a 7th round TKO. Hasegawa, 31, knocked Felix to the canvas with a right hand in the 7th.

After he got up, Hasegawa unleashed a storm of punches ending with the referee stepping in to halt the fight. Hasegawa dominated the earlier rounds, catching Felix again and again with hard right hooks as he was coming forward trying to land. Offensively, Hasegawa looked very good, reminding one a little of Nonito Donaire the way he catches his opponents with hooks when they’re tying to get in range.

Hasegawa needs to stay busy if he wants to get another world title shot. He can’t afford to be taking year-long layoffs.

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Ao decisions Kokietgym

Making his third defense, WBC super featherweight champion Takahiro Ao (23-2-1, 10 KO’s) defeated challenger Terdsak Kokietgym (46-4-1, 31 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision. The judges’ scores were 116-112, 116-112 and 118-110.