WBO welterweight champion Brian Norman Jr. (28-0, 22 KOs) looked devastatingly efficient, destroying challenger Jin Sasaki (19-2-1, 17 KOs) by a brutal fifth-round highlight reel knockout on Thursday night in front of a quiet crowd at the Ota-City General Gymnasium in Tokyo, Japan. Sasaki was down three times in this sickeningly one-sided fight.
In the fifth, Norman Jr. connected with a bone-shattering left hook to the head of Sasaki, sending him down back-first on the canvas where he lay without moving. The referee gave a count and halted the contest. The official time of the stoppage was at 0:46 of round five.
Replays showed that Sasaki was throwing a punch of his own, and didn’t see the left hook from Norman Jr that hit him. The champion got everything into that punch and bowled over the smaller Sasaki.
The referee should have arguably stopped the fight immediately because it was so obvious that Sasaki wasn’t going to get up. He was just lying there on his back, arms to his side, without any movement. When a fighter is in that condition, the refs normally halt it, but not in this case.
Norman Jr. dropped Sasaki twice in the opening round. The first knockdown came from a left hook to the back of Sasaki’s head. The Japanese challenger came in low and was nailed by a left that sent him down. Moments later, Norman Jr. unloaded with a three-punch combination that put Sasaki down for the second time in the round. Sasaki looked on shaky legs when he got back to his feet. The fight could have been stopped at that moment if the referee had wanted, because Sasaki looked out of it.
From the first round, Sasaki, 23, stood no chance against the bigger, stronger, and far more talented Norman Jr. Sasaki was too small to do anything against such a large, powerful fighter like Norman Jr.
In hindsight, the WBO needs to do a better job of ranking fighters, as it was evident from Sasaki’s performance that he didn’t belong in the top 15. He didn’t look nearly good enough to be fighting anyone in the division, and would have been wiped out even by contenders at the bottom of the top tier.
“Per Carl Moretti of Top Rank, who was at Norman-Sasaki: “Sasaki was taken to the hospital for precautionary reasons, was released and is back at the hotel.” Good news,” reports Dan Rafael on X.
