Kosei Tanaka becomes four-weight titlist with shutout win over Christian Bacasegua
Kosei Tanaka scored a personal record, and he did it in record time as well.
In what was only his 21th professional bout, Tanaka became the new WBO junior bantamweight beltholder after a thorough domination of Christian Bacasegua, lifting the belt thanks to scorecards of 116-111, 117-110, and 119-108 in a fight that took place in Tokyo, Japan.
Bacasegua scored well early, taking the first two rounds as Tanaka was getting his rhythm going. But it was all Tanaka after that. Bacasegua visited the canvas in the eighth round, and Tanaka stepped up his game then, putting more pressure and landing at will, especially with a demolishing uppercut that found its way to Bacasegua’s body to put the finishing touches on a solid performance.
With the win, the 29-year-old Tanaka, rated at No. 4 by The Ring at junior bantamweight going in, improves to 20-1 (11 knockouts) and becomes a four-weight beltholder having won belts at 105, 108 and 112 pounds.
Bacasegua, 26, drops to 22-5-2 (9 KOs).
In his previous attempt to grab a junior bantamweight belt, Tanaka was stopped in eight rounds by Kazuto Ioka in 2022 in what is still his only loss to date.
In the first televised fight of the night, Riku Masuda (4-1, 4 KOs). stopped Jonas Sultan (19-6, 11 KOs) in the first round with a crippling body shot that sent the Filipino fighter down and left him ready for a second knockdown moments later, when the fight was waved off at the 2:21 mark of the initial episode in what was Sultan’s first stoppage loss.
Diego M. Morilla has written for The Ring since 2013. He has also written for HBO.com, ESPN.com and many other magazines, websites, newspapers and outlets since 1993. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and an elector for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He has won two first-place awards in the BWAA’s annual writing contest, and he is the moderator of The Ring’s Women’s Ratings Panel. He served as copy editor for the second era of The Ring en Español (2018-2020) and is currently a writer and editor for RingTV.com.
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