By Eric Baldwin: #2 WBO Zou Shiming (9-1, 2 KOs) defeated #3 WBO Prasitsak Phaprom (39-2-2, 24 KOs) by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night to capture the vacant World Boxing Organization flyweight title at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The final judges’ scores were 120-107. 120-107 and 119-108. Shiming, 35, knocked Phaprom down in the 2nd round with a right hand to the head.
Shiming took some really hard shots to the head through the first five rounds, but he showed a good chin in taking the blow.
This was the second time that Shiming had beaten Phaprom, as he easily beat him by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision two years ago in China.
Shiming looked decent, but far from great tonight. He had the perfect opponent in front of him in Phaprom instead of a good fighter like Roman Gonzalez, Kazuto Ioka, Juan Francisco Estrada or Johnriel Casimero. Those guys would have handily beaten Shiming if they had been inside the ring with him tonight.
Shiming reportedly is interested in fighting Roman Gonzalez now, who has already moved up in weight to fight at super flyweight. That would be a very tough fight for Shiming, because Gonzalez is a good puncher at flyweight. Shiming was getting hit a lot tonight by Phaprom, who isn’t that good of a fighter. If Gonzalez is able to land the kinds of shots that Phaprom was on Shiming’s chin, the fight isn’t likely to last long. It would be a good payday though for Shiming in taking on Gonzalez, even if he gets knocked out. I think Shiming’s promoters at Top Rank will make a major effort to setup a fight between him and Roman Gonzalez, because that’s the only way he’s going to get a big payday. If Shiming just defends his WBO title against the contenders in the flyweight division, he’s not going to make a lot of money because most of them are obscure fighters. Besides that, Shiming doesn’t possess the talent to hold onto his WBO title for any length of time.
Shiming’s No.1 contender is Donnie Nietes, and I don’t think he’s going to be able to beat that guy, because he’s so much better than the guys he’s been fighting. Top Rank can play it two ways. They can take their chances that Shiming will be able to get past Nietes in order to milk his WBO title against the mostly lesser fighters in the flyweight division or they can look for a cash out fight by putting him in the ring with the likes of Roman Gonzalez or maybe Carlos Cuadras. Either way, I see Shiming getting knocked out.