Jezreel Corrales vs. Takashi Uchiyama – Results

By Boxing News - 12/31/2016 - Comments

By Jim Dower: WBA Super World super featherweight champion Jezreel Corrales (21-1-1, 8 KOs) defeated 37-year-old former WBA champion Takashi Uchiyama (24-2, 20 KOs) by a 12 round split decision on Saturday night to retain his WBA title at the Ota-City General Gymasium, in Tokyo, Japan. The final judges’ scores were 115-113, 117-110 for Corrales and 114-113 for Uchiyama.

Boxing News 24 had Corrales winning the fight 10 rounds to 2. Uchiyama did very little in the fight aside from scoring a flash knockdown in the 5th round. Corrales was squared up and off balance after throwing a shot late in the 5th, and Uchiyama was able to drop him with a left. Corrales got back to his feet and was totally unhurt.

Corrales dominated the remainder of the fight quite easily. Uchiyama was missing with most of his shots, and he wasn’t letting his hands go enough to get the win. In the last three rounds of the fight, Uchiyama finally started pressing the attack, but he was too far behind on the scorecards to comeback from the deficit.

It appeared that the 25-year-old southpaw Corrales gassed out a little in the last three rounds of the fight, as he didn’t do a whole lot. However, Corrales still appeared to win two of the last three rounds. The only rounds that Uchiyama clearly won in the fight were round 5 and 12. Other than that, it was all Corrales in dominating.

Uchiyama suffered a bloody nose in the 6th. The nose bleed would plague him all throughout the fight.

Uchiyama failed to apply enough pressure to get to Corrales in the fight. The Japanese fighter was letting Corrales pick when the action would take place, and this made it easy for the Panamanian fighter. When Uchiyama would attack, he’d miss frequently with single punches. Uchiyama wasn’t combination shots. It was mostly one punch at a time. This enabled Corrales to back away to avoid the punches. It was too easy for Corrales to avoid Uchiyama’s shots, because he was telegraphing everything he threw. The difference in age between the two fighters was abundantly clear. Corrales looked like a young fighter in his 20s facing a guy twice his age in his 40s. Uchiyama didn’t have the youth, foot speed or the right punching technique to get the better of Corrales.

The scoring was too close for the way the fight was conducted. One reason for that is possibly the cheering from the Japanese crowd for Uchiyama. The boxing fans cheered every shot that Uchiyama landed in the fight, and this magnified what he was doing in making it seem like he was doing better than he really was. Uchiyama wasn’t doing well. He was getting dominated by Corrales, but the crowds made it appear that the fight was being won by Uchiyama with the cheering they were doing. You can understand why the judges would be thrown off by crowd noise. This should have been a near shutout for Corrales in the scoring.

For Corrales, this was the second time he’d beaten Uchiyama. He beat him last April by a 12nd round knockout. Uchiyama was knocked down three times in that fight.

Uchiyama might want to think about retiring from boxing, because it’s hard to see him being able to comeback and win another world title at his age. The champions at super featherweight are too good now, and they’re all young fighters with few flaws. Uchiyama would have problems against all of them.

In other boxing results on the card, WBA light flyweight champion Ryochi Taguchi (25-2-2, 11 KOs) and Carlos Canizales (16-0-1, 13 KOs) fought to a 12 round draw. The scores were 116-112 for Taguchi, 116-112 for Canizales, and 114-114. Canizales used movement well go foil the attacks from Taguchi throughout the fight. It was impressive stuff from Canizales. This was a fight that Canizales appeared to win, but the cheering for Taguchi seemed to make him appear that he was fighting better than he was.