New Year's Eve in Tokyo. Co-main event of Fernando Daniel Martínez vs. Kazuto Ioka II. 12 rounds scheduled at featherweight in a WBA championship eliminator. Shunto - no relation to current WBA bantamweight titlist Seiya Tsutsumi, although he does have a kid brother Reito Tsutsumi who's making waves at lightweight on the Japanese amateur scene (there are four siblings who all were talented at boxing and karate, but the other two have pursued college instead of combat sports while Shunto and Reito honed their skills) - has expressed hopes of carrying Ioka's torch going forward as Japan's main eventer on these December 31st shows. He is looking to make a statement versus the brother of a man Ioka defeated in his third such program - Felix Alvarado in 2013. While both of the Nicaraguan twins are dangerous boxer-punchers, René was always the slightly lesser brother and is now 35. Still a tall order for a five bout novice - and stopping him would be no mean feat as it's only ever happened once in his career and that was on cuts versus Andrew Cancio.
Should be a good fight and a stern test for Tsustumi. I haven't seen a lot of him but the little that I have has impressed me, though he needs to get those weight issues in check because he isn't that big for featherweight and the JBC really don't like it when fighters don't make the contracted weight.
Alvarado is +1420 some places! I'll have some of that, Rene is nothing but a warrior and made of stern stuff.
Extremely minor details but it's Hayato Tsutsumi and its for the super featherweight eliminater, not featherweight.
Kanji reading on names are sometimes very wierd in Japan. The letters his name uses is 駿(shun)斗(to) but is read as Hayato in this case. 駿(shun) is a kanji that has a meaning of fast, instant, and such, which is "hayai" in Japanese, and he uses the meaning to read it as Hayato, as weird as it may seem from a non-kanji country. He is listed on BoxRec as Hayato Tsutsumi. He is ranked by WBA as Hayato Tsutsumi. His wikipedia says Hayato Tsutsumi on the title (but wrongfully Shunto within the article). Japanese announcers call him Tsutsumi Hayato during interviews. Most of all, his Instagram account that he owns is spelled out @tsutsumi_hayato
Think what a banner year it could be in the Alvarado household if Félix wins his (IBF flyweight) eliminator tonight and René wins his next week. They'd be guaranteed a world title shot each heading into 2025. The brothers would be jubilantly slugging down macuá well into the wee hours of January first.
...and sure, René has only stopped one person in more than five years - but neither he nor his twin will ever not be dangerous, IMO. Power is the last to go and that family is blessed in that department (well beyond even what the records show).
"As mentioned, the rest of the show will go ahead, including the mouth watering clash between Hayato Tsutsumi (5-0, 2) [堤 駿斗] and Rene Alvarado (31-14, 22), who both made weight for their WBA Super Featherweight world title eliminator. On the scales Trsutusmi, for his first bout as a Super Featherweight, was 129.7lbs whilst Alvarado, a former WBA champion, was 128.5lbs, with both looking in great shape. With the cancellation of the Martinez Vs Ioka bout this has become the show’s main event." 128.5 eh...
