Rewatched Ioka's last fight with Josber Perez and thought he looked impressive. His boxing style is so clean and pretty to watch the way he operates at such a calm, calculating, non-flashy manner. He constantly gets overshadowed by Naoya Inoue and other fighters from the lower weight class for some reason but his skills cannnot be overlooked. He's a highly underrated technician. I honestly think he's a Top 10 P4P fighter who rarely gets enough attention, especially for someone who has been fighting in a stacked weight class. Still hoping that he finally gets his shot with the big names such as Choco, Gallo, Bam, or Nakatani before he retires.
Definitely the most unappreciated of the great super flies of this Renaissance of great 115lbers in the last decade or so. Chocolatito and Wangek inspired rabid hype from internet boxing hipsters, and to a lesser extent so has Estrada compared to Ioka.
hes been avoiding big fights for a decade now and by the time he stopped trying to blatantly age out nietes and actually fought him he lost. he has a much lesser reputation because he generally avoids the big challenges. these last few years he has actually stepped up with the likes of tanaka, franco etc but he'll never go near the best. him and chocolatito have been in the same division for about a decade from 105 to 115, and chocolatito fought often in japan and ioka never looked his way. he straight up retired to avoid inoue, and is now going to 118 as soon as he left. and did the same at 115. hes a great watch but the fact hes fighting guys like josber perez on new years says a lot.
maybe but i dont think its a coincidence he jumped to a weight class immediately after inoue left it. twice. even with nakatani, he dropped the 115 WBO when he was made mandatory and even after beating franco made no attempt to fight him. either im a generational hater or hes a generational ducker.
nakatani is already fighting at 118, which is very impressive but i think his eyes are on inoue as he likely will never fight at 115 again and i dont think jesse would make 118 anyitme soon, if ever
@CST80 Turned me on to Ioka and I immediately took a liking to his style and considerable skills and slickness. He should be ranked in the P4P top 10. Kick Haney's gigantic weight bully ass out and make a space for an actual master boxer who, in complete contrast to Haney who has never beaten a single champ remotely close to his size, has done so many times and many bigger than him many times. He's #2 behind Inoue and much better than that ugly unchi licking bakayaro Junto Nakatani The Japanese School of Slickness is not to be taken lightly. Japanese slicksters are big players on the world stage now. It currently ranks at #3 on the ISS (International Slickness Scale) behind #1 Great Britain and #2 Ukraine and a full 46 places above US slickness.