Kenshiro Teraji claimed a world title in a third weight class Monday in Tokyo, Japan, with a unanimous 12 round decision win over Israel Gonzalez. <\/p>\n
The new WBO junior bantamweight champion won via scores of 117-110, 116-110 and 115-111 to compliment his trophy cabinet that already included WBC belts at junior fly and flyweight.<\/p>\n
Teraji, 26-2 (16 KOs), was considered past his best after losing to Ricardo Sandoval in December but against Mexico\u2019s Gonzalez, 32-6-2 (12 KOs) the 34-year-old bounced back with aplomb.<\/p>\n
In control from the start, Japan\u2019s Teraji decked his rival with a right hand in the second round as he poured on the pressure. He would lose a point in the fourth for punches below the belt, however.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez showed signs of fighting back from the halfway point but, during the final stages, it was Teraji who was firmly back in control.<\/p>\n
On the undercard, there was a triumph for another Japanese star over a Mexican as Shokichi Iwata, 17-2 (14 KOs), stopped previously unbeaten Erik Badillo, 19-1-1 (8 KOs), in 11 rounds.<\/p>\n
Badillo, a southpaw, floored Iwata in the fourth but was under pressure eating unanswered right hands when the referee ended things at 2-13 of the penultimate stanza. <\/p>\n
At the time of stoppage Iwata \u2013 the WBC junior flyweight boss \u2013 led by scores of 98-91 (twice) and 97-92.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kenshiro Teraji claimed a world title in a third weight class Monday in Tokyo, Japan, with a unanimous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,710,49,48,19448,286582,82],"class_list":["post-817324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-boxingscene","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-kenshiro-teraji","tag-shokichi-iwata","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}