Kaovichit Decisions Hisataka In Dull Fight

By Boxing News - 05/27/2009 - Comments

denkaosan1By Jason Kim: Making his first defense of his World Boxing Association flyweight title, Denkaosan Kaovichit (47-1-1, 20 KOs) defeated Hiroyuki Hisataka (17-8-1, 8 KOs) by a 12-round split decision on Tuesday night at the Central Stadium, in Uttaradit, Thailand. The bout had little action other than jabs, clinched and occasional head butts between the two fighters. Neither Hisataka nor Kaovichit had much power and were content to tap away with light shots for 12 rounds. From the 8th round on, it was mostly punch and clinch from the champion Kaovichit, 32, who didn’t look very impressive in the fight to say the least.

The final judge’ scores were 115-112, 115-112 for Kaovichit and 113-115 for Hisataka. Despite doing little other than clinch and grab all fight long, I had Kaovichit winning by a landslide winning a minimum of nine of the twelve rounds.

The only reason I scored the rounds for Kaovichit was because Hisataka fought incredibly passive throughout the fight, not letting his hands go with any regularity and punching with zero power. Ranked number #12 in the WBA flyweight division, Hisataka had lost an incredible four out of his last six fights going into to Tuesday night’s bout.

With those many defeats coming in such a short time frame, the natural question that comes to mind is how in the world can a fighter with that many defeats be ranked so highly in the WBA?

I have no idea, but the way that Hisataka fought against Kaovichit I’m frankly surprised that he doesn’t have even more losses. There were no knockdowns in the bout and the only real excitement that came was when the referee decided to take a point away from Kaovichit in the 8th round for throwing consecutive rabbit punches to the back of Histataka’s head. Aside from that, there was mostly clinching, wrestling and jabbing between the two fighters for 12 rounds. It was a very dull fight to put it mildly.

In the 1st round, Kaovichit stalked Hisataka around the ring, jabbing him repeatedly to the head and midsection. Kaovichit’s main focus was the midsection of Hisataka, as he aimed most of his jabs in the area. Kaovichit looked powerfully built like a power puncher, but his hand speed or lack thereof seemed to prevent him from landing any of his few attempts at connecting with a right hand in the round.

Hisataka, for his part, only threw five punches in the entire round and looked to be content with his role of eating jabs.

The second and third rounds were basically a carbon copy of the 1st round with Kaovichit throwing largely nothing but jabs and Hisataka doing little offensively. I kept waiting for Kaovichit to open up with some power shots, because he had the opportunity at all times due to Hisataka’s passive style of fighting. However, Kaovichit appeared not interested in trying anything other than to throw jabs.

In the 4th round, Hisataka finally started to throw some punches, returning fire with harmless jabs and turning the round into a jab contest. Kaovichit seemed to get the better of the action with his jabs to the midsection compared to Hisataka’s occasional jabs to the head. At this point, the fight was putting me to sleep.

The 5th round as Hisataka landed two fight hands in the round and a bunch of jabs. Nothing else besides that, though. As usual, Kaovichit threw nothing but jabs and made it boring to watch. Hisataka seemed to get the better of the action in the 6th, landing more jabs than Kaovichit for a change.

By this time, the two fighters began to clinch a lot after throwing jabs. In rounds seven and eight, Kaovichit went back to dominating with his jab and grab technique. The two fighters clashed heads a few times and wrestled a lot on the inside.

Kaovichit was penalized one point for throwing a rabbit punch to the back of Hisataka’s head when his back was turned. There was very little action in both of the rounds in terms of punches landed. Most of the time the two fighters were clinching and wrestling, reminding me of out of shape heavyweights rather than flyweights. In rounds nine though twelve, Kaovichit dominated with his jabs, throwing little else.

Like in the previous rounds, both fighters clinched a great deal and wrestled around on the inside. In the 12th, Kaovichit spent a lot of time running around the ring with his arms raised as if the fight were already over. As bad as he fought, it was more than a little embarrassing the way he was conducting himself. I still had him winning the round because Hisataka missed with almost every punch he threw and let himself get tied up often by Kaovichit in clinches.

Overall, both fighters looked bad, really bad. I can’t see Kaovichit holding the title for long. Once he fights Koki Kameda, his number #1 challenger, Kaovichit can kiss goodbye his WBA title.