Today in Tokyo, Japan, on the customary New Year’s Eve fight card in the great country, former multi-weight champ Kazuto Ioka made an impressive bantamweight debut, this as he used his sharp body punches to take out a game but outgunned Maikel Ordosgoitti inside just four rounds.
Ioka, coming off back-to-back losses to Fernando Martinez, looked both fast and powerful with the newly put on weight. Dropping his foe with a left to the body in round two, Ioka got the stoppage win with the same shot, this in round-four. Now 32-4-1(17), Ioka showed he has perhaps got quite a bit left to offer, at the new weight, at age 36.
Ordosgoitti tried but he was never able to get any kind of a foothold in the short fight. Now 15-2(14) Ordosgoitti was taken apart by a future Hall of Famer. It was that simple.
Today’s fight was a WBA eliminator, so in theory, Ioka could next challenge Seiya Tsutsumi. However, the fight Ioka seems to really want, is one with WBC 118-Pound champion, Takuma Inoue (brother of “The Monster”).
Either fight would be most interesting to see, and nobody could count out an Ioka win over either current champion.
Can Ioka win yet another belt some time in 2026? Maybe.