By Francisco Chantengo: Making his sixth defense of his WBC bantamweight title, champion Hozumi Hasegawa (24-2, 8 KOs) made easy work of his challenger Cristian Faccio (15-3, 10 KOs), stopping him in the 2nd round of a scheduled 12-round title bout on Wednesday night at the Nihon Budokan, in Tokyo, Japan. Hasegawa, 27, was never troubled by the #9th ranked WBC bantamweight challenger Facio, whom he dropped twice in the second round with big left hands. On the second knockdown, the referee Toby Gibson suddenly called a halt to the bout at 2:18 of the 2nd round.
It appeared, however, that Faccio was okay, could still fight and was mostly knocked down because Hasegawa had chased Faccio around the ring and tagged him with a combination while having a running start. Nevertheless, Faccio would have likely been stopped anyway, because the first knockdown, a huge left hand blast from Hasegawa, was a huge shot that dropped Faccio on the seat of his pants at the very start of the round. From there, it was all Hasegawa as he teed-off on Faccio, hitting him with tremendous left hands as he attempted to retreat around the ring and buy some time.