By Jim Dower: World Boxing Association welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko (30-0, 20 KO’s) had an easy time beating Motoki Sasaki (32-8-1, 20 KO’s) by a hopelessly one-sided 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Sportpalace Drusba, in Donetsk, Ukraine. Senchenko, 31, was making the first defense of his WBA title after capturing the crown six months ago with a 12 round decision victory over Yuriy Nuzhnenko.

It was an optional defense for Senchenko, and naturally, like a lot of fighters are prone to do, he selected from the very bottom of the pack, choosing number #15 ranked WBA contender Sasaki to fight instead of a live body like Joshua Clottey or Saul Alvarez.

As such, the fight was ridiculously one-sided, as Senchenko basically toyed with the short 5’7″ Sasaki for 12 rounds, winning by the lopsided scores of 119-107, 119-107 and 119-107. Perhaps the only interesting thing that occurred in the entire fight was when the 33-year-old Sasaki head butted Senchenko in the 6th round, causing a big cut above Senchenko’s right eye brow.

The head butt led to Sasaki by penalized two points by Stanley Christodoulou. It hardly mattered, because Senchenko had won every round up to that point and would continue to dominate the action for the remainder of the fight. Sasaki, however, grew desperate in the later rounds of the fight, and pressured Senchenko constantly, rushing at him with the wildest of attacks and missing most of the time.

Although listed as 5’7″, Sasaki looked absolutely tiny compared to the 5’10” Senchenko, which made me question the listed height of Sasaki. At best, Sasaki looked 5’5″, and appeared to need a chair to stand on top of to connect to the head of Senchenko.

This was a really bad match-up and I found myself wondering how Sasaki could be ranked as high number #15 by the WBA and look this bad. However, the talent is rather thin in the welterweight division. You take one look at the WBA welterweight rankings and see Zab Judah at number #3 and that kind of tells you all you need to know.

In the 9th round, Senchenko was cut over the left eye by Sasaki when he rushed forward and threw a big looping right hand that sliced open a big cut above Senchenko’s left eye. Sasaki was very aggressive in the round, and sprinted at Senchenko while throwing big haymaker shots in the round. It made the round close because Senchenko was mostly trying to avoid Sasaki when he made these wild attacks and was limited to landing counter shots.

It was ugly boxing to watch because Sasaki looked really desperate and was fighting in a kind of frenzied style that looked not all together professional. However, Sasaki probably no other choice but to fight like this, because he had been thoroughly dominated in the prior eight rounds while trying to patiently stalk the much taller Senchenko. The lack of height and reach was a real problem for Sasaki.

If he was fighting a shorter fighter around 5’5″, Sasaki would probably be a tough fighter to beat, but he was dealing with a fighter that looked at least six inches taller than him and who knew how to fight tall.

In rounds ten through eleven, Senchenko dominated Sasaki, easily picking him off as Sasaki would rush forward blindly trying to connect with anything. Senchenko’s face was literally covered with blood in the last two rounds, making him seem as if he was wearing a red mask. The blood was all over Sasaki was well, covering his face and his upper body.