Scabbers - Check your PM's
imaioral wrote:Fast rising boxing star, lets see in next 5 next fights the level of his opponents because for now most are good for the number of fights he did.
The problem of most Japanese fighters is that they seem to be afraid or something about fighting out of japan (dunno if there is another thing involved like honor, money or else beyond this, is something I really would like to know).
IMO a good confident boxer fights everywhere, most of boxers with balls go to japan to fight them (mostly Philippines, Mexico, thailandese) never the contrary, just pick randomly someone and see their career resume where the fights were done.
I'll make a post about it...
Fast rising? His last 2 performances have been poor, and I mean poor, with boxingraise showing them both. He looked good in his two previous bouts (so 3 and 4 bouts back) but repeated hand injuries (one of which was caused sparring stable mate Yoshitaka Kato) are going to slow his rise. His next bout will likely be for an OPBF or WBO Asia Pacific title, and that has more to with the fact that his next mandatory would be Koichi Aso who he has beaten twice already)
Japanese fighter get better TV figures for figthing at home. Would you rather fight in front of 150,000 TV viewers travelling to fight in the UK on a Sky Sports card, or fighting in front of 3,000,000 on TV Tokyo? The money, in some cases, is better to travel but the big names still make decent money to fight at home, and the sponsors and such help with that. The top guys also have TV deals (i.e. TV Tokyo cover Uchiyama, Fuji TV do Inoue, TBS/MBS do Ioka) and pay really well for big fights. Estrada was mandated to fight Ioka but Estrada's team knew they wouldn't be able to match the money TBS would throw behind Ioka.
You mention Japanese fighters not travelling but just last weekend we probably saw why as Kawashima seemed to do enough to beat Mijares in Mexico, Amagasa not being given a round by 1 judge when he fought Warrington in the UK won't have helped either (he actually havd a 120-107 card against him as well in that fight!) However Tomoki Kameda, Katsunari Takayama, Riku Kano, Shoki Sakai*, and others have all fougth outside of Japan recent with decent success. Koki Eto was almost jobbed when he had his bout with Porpramook, Higa (one of the real hidden gem prospects) has bouts on the road, Koki Inoue as well. Nishioka fought in multiple continents.
The big names have TV deals with TV companies willing to pay big bucks, some of the lesser names have little reason to travel (though will travel for the right offer), others will travel. If Okada is going to get a world title fight he would almost certainly have to travel or get a vacant title fight.
*Sakai is actually based in Mexico
