Earlier today in Yokohama, Japan, Mexico’s Eduardo Nunez won an exciting, bruising battle with home favourite Masanori Rikiishi, with him picking up the vacant IBF super-featherweight title. It was an excellent fight all the way, even though it did take the two men a couple of rounds to really ramp up the action. In the end, Nunez–who his promoter Eddie Hearn believes can become the next Mexican star–was awarded a fully deserved unanimous decision, the scores being 117-111, 116-112, and 115-113.
Now 28-1(27), “Sugar” Nunez scored a most impressive away-from-home win today. But Rikiishi, who is now 16-2(11), made Nunez work hard for the victory.
Nunez goes to war, Rikiishi can’t hold him off
The southpaw from Japan enjoyed a significant height and reach advantage, but Rikiishi was unable to keep the constantly aggressive Nunez off him. Often backed into the ropes, the home fighter took some cracking right hands to head and body but he took them well. It looked by the middle rounds that there wasn’t much chance of the fight going all the way, but down to the wire it did go.
There was some superb trading going on in a number of rounds today, and Nunez had to eat some uppercuts to the jaw. The heavily-muscled Mexican showed some chin himself. Rikiishi also had some success with his own body work. Together, these men, both at or about in their prime, put on quite the enjoyable to watch fight.
Nunez was sent stumbling in the eighth, this rousing the large crowd, but the co-challenger was mostly caught whilst off-balance. The battle raged to the bitter end, and though Nunez won most of the rounds today he had to work hard and dig deep as he did so.
All eyes on Cacace—IBF title finally up for grabs
There were zero complaints about the decision from Rikiishi or his team, as everyone in the arena knew Nunez deserved to have his hand raised. It will be interesting to see who Hearn looks to match Nunez with next. A fight between Nunez and British star Anthony Cacace would be great to see. Cacace declined defending his IBF belt against Nunez in favour of taking a lucrative fight with Leigh Wood. Might these two now get it on later this year?
