By Jason Kim: Undefeated WBA featherweight champion Chris John (42-0-1, 22 KOs) defeated his Japanese challenger Hiroyuki Enoki (27-1, 19 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision on Saturday night, at the Korakuen Hall, in Tokyo, Japan. For John, 29, it was his 10th successful title defense of his WBA belt which he won in September 2003 with a win over Oscar Leon. John, from Indonesia, dominated the entire fight with his speed, movement and superior boxing skills over his Japanese opponent. The final judges’ scores were 118-110, 118-110 and 117-111, all for John.
Enoki’s left eye was badly swollen by the 8th round, and he could see probably very little, if at all out of the eye. It didn’t appear to slow him down any, however, as Enoki fought incredibly hard throughout the fight, pressuring John constantly and throwing a lot of punches. John used his jab, fast combinations and movement to give Enoki a lot of problems, getting the better of him in most of the exchanges between the two.
The first round was very close, as Enoki aggressively attacked John with combinations. John would block most of them, but a lot still leaked through his gloves and landed. John used a lot of lateral movement to try and throw Enoki off. It worked only somewhat, because he proved to be good at cutting off the ring on John and forcing him to fight. This was no problem for John, who would throw powerful jabs over and over again to the head of Enoki, snapping his head back with the power jabs.
John unleashed two series of beaufutiful combinations near the end of the round that stopped Enoki in his tracks, causing his forward momentum to halt for a moment. John used hard combinations and jabs to control the 2nd through 5th rounds, hitting Enoki with fast lightning like shots. Enoki kept coming forward, throwing wide punches, many of them landing, but no match for John’s faster, straighter punches down the middle. John landed some especially hard right hands near the end of the 5th round that seemed to get Enoki’s attention loud and clear.
In the 6th round, Enoki’s left eye began to close, no doubt a product of John’s hard jabs that he kept landing to the face of Enoki. The referee stopped the action for a few seconds to have the ring side doctor examine Enoki’s swelling eye. However, he allowed the fight to continue despite the rapidly closing eye of Enoki. In rounds seven though nine, John continued with his dominance of Enoki, stinging him with jabs and quick left-right combinations.
Enoki’s punch output began to drop off during these rounds, and by the 9th round, he began looking tired. He still kept coming forward, but he was throwing fewer and fewer punches as the fight progressed towards the later rounds. Instead of Enoki pushing John back with his attacks, it was John now who was forcing Enoki to back up and try and defend himself. Near the end of the round, the two fighters clashed heads, but no cuts appeared to result from this.
John landed a big sweeping right hand to the jaw of Enoki at the end of the 10th round, knocking him off balance and twisting his head from the force of the blow. John’s right eye began to show purple swelling underneath it in the 11th round, but it didn’t progress any further than that. Both fighters fought hard in the 12th round, with John getting much the better of the toe-to-toe action at center ring. In the end, John was a class above Enoki, who fought bravely, but didn’t have the skills to contend with the superior John.