By Jason Kim: WBC flyweight champion Daisuke Naito (33-1-3, 21 KOs) successfully defended his title with a 10th round TKO over challenger Tomonobu Shimizu (13-3, 5 KOs) on Wednesday night at the Yoyogi First Gym, in Tokyo, Japan. Naito, 33, had difficulties catching up to the defensive wizard Shimizu, 27, who spent the entire fight running, circling and clinching Naito. Finally, however, Naito landed a right hand that caught Shimizu while he was off balance trying to escape yet again, and knocked him to the canvas. Shimizu wasn’t the least bit hurt, but it didn’t matter, for it caused Naito to unleash a blizzard of punches while Shimizu was trapped along the ropes trying to cover up, knocking him to the canvas. This time, Shimizu was badly hurt and got up slowly but didn’t beat the referee Frank Garza’s count, who then stopped the fight at 0:57 of the 10th round.
The fight was marred by Shimizu’s constant running and holding, which turned the fight into a big track meet with Naito having to spend most of the time chasing Shimizu around the ring in order to land. Naito was forced to jog lightly for most of the fight, and often times he would ram heads with Shimizu when he would suddenly stop for a second. Incredibly, the judges had Shimizu, ranked # 13 in the WBC flyweight division, ahead in the fight at the time of the stoppage. I personally couldn’t see one round that he came close to winning, because he was, like I said, either running or clinching most of the time.
When he would throw punches, they would miss badly due to his erratic aim. It didn’t help matters that he would lower his head when he would attempt to throw a punch, and had no idea where his punches were going at any given time. Naito wasn’t much better in that department, either, missing most of his punches with wild haymakers. A lot of the punches that Naito would attempt where from far off in which he would attempt hooks or uppercuts from a great distance from Shimizu. By the time the punch traveled to where Shimizu was previously at, he was long gone by then.
In the first two rounds, Naito busily chased Shimizu around the ring, throwing wild shots from every direction at him. Many of the punches missed badly, but enough landed to win the rounds quite easily. Shimizu seemed ill equipped as far as his offense goes, having little power and no idea how to throw punches with any accuracy at all. His whole thing seemed to be centered around his defense, clinching often and running nonstop. His clinching was mostly limited to headlocks, something he would do over and over again in every round of the fight.
I was surprised that the referee never penalized him for it because I had never seen a fighter use head locks as often before seeing Shimizu. He had it down to an art, grab Naito around the neck as if wrestling a steer, then yank his head down to around waist level and hold him there until the referee separated the two fighters. Because of the running, missed punches and headlocks, the fight was barely watchable.
The third round was somewhat close, only because Shimizu finally stopped running for long enough to throw a few punches, and lucked out when they actually landed. In each case, he appeared to have his eyes closed and, of course, he had his head down when he threw the punches.
In rounds four through seven, Naito continued to chase Shimizu all around the ring, hitting him with punches thrown from every angle. In the seventh, the referee finally warned Shimizu about his constant headlocks, but nothing changed in the subsequent rounds, he continued with grabbing Naito and twisting his head into headlocks.
Around the same time, both fighters began ramming heads with each other with even greater frequency than they had in the earlier rounds. This produced a large goose-egg on Naito’s forehead. Shimizu didn’t seem bothered by the head butts one bit. In rounds eight and nine, the running and chasing continued, with Naito landing most of the shots as usual.
By this time, the audience, usually loud, seemed bored by the fight. I can’t say I blame them, because both fighters were totally stinking up the joint, especially Shimizu. In the eighth, there was yet another head butt, this one causing Naito to retreat to the corner and wince in pain. The referee immediately let the fight continue, even though Naito looked like he was still in a great deal of pain from the blow.