By Tim Williams: WBA minimumweight champion Yutaka Niida (23-1-3, 9 KOs) stopped challenger Jose Luis Varela (15-4, 7 KOs) in the sixth round on Saturday night at the Korakuen Hall, in Tokyo, Japan. In the sixth round, Niida, 29, nailed Varela with a hard left hook to his midsection, which instantly hurt Varela causing him to back up to the ropes. Niida calmly followed after him and landed three more body shots, sending Varela down to the canvas in pain. Referee Raul Caiz moved in and stopped the fight at 2:16 of the sixth round, as Varela was unable to get up off the canvas.
Varela, ranked #13 in the WBA minimumweight division, had problems dealing with Niida’s speed from start of the fight. Though Varela had little problems hitting Niida, that wasn’t the issue. The problem was that when Niida would land, he’d often throw blinding fast triple and quad-triple hooks to the body and head of Varela, who had no answer on how to defend against these kinds of attacks. Unlike many of Niida’s previous opponents, Varela didn’t have a huge size advantage over Niida. In fact, Varela, only 5’0″, was even shorter than the 5’1″ Niida, which meant that Varela wouldn’t be able to keep him on the outside.
By the second round, Niida, who started out slowly in the 1st round, began bombarding Varela with triple and quad-triple hooks repeatedly whenever he would get in close. Varela attempted to defend against this by circling the ring and picking spots in which to attack Niida. This was fairly successful in this round and for half of the 3rd round. However, Niida timed Varela perfectly as he was coming in and tagged him with a big left hook to the head, knocking Varela to the canvas in the 3rd round. For the remainder of the round, Niida pounded Varela with left hooks and right hands, basically chasing after him as Varela ran to avoid taking more punishment.
Niida began landing more triple hooks in the fourth round, hitting Varela with incredible speed. The punches weren’t particularly hard, but due to speed with which Niida was throwing them, it probably was hard enough to cause problems for Varela. For his part, Varela came back late in the fifth round to land a handful of punches to the head of Niida.
Perhaps thinking that he had Niida where he wanted him, Varela came on attacking in the sixth round, throwing combinations to the head and body of Niida. Varela threw one particularly right to the midsection of Niida that got his attention, for seconds later Niida fired back an identical body shot, a left hand, at Varela that hurt him visibly causing him to wince with pain and attempt to clinch.
Having none of it, Niida immediately broke free of the clinch and came after Varela, who had backed up against the ropes. Niida then landed a three punch combination to the midsection of Varela, that sent him down to the canvas where he laid in agony for almost three minutes. Upon seeing that Varela was in no condition to continue fighting, referee Raul Caiz stopped the fight at 2:16 of the 6th round.