His record as an amateur seems impressive and he scored a very good win as a professional over Horacio Accavallo, but how good was he before his eye went?
Never seen footage of him, unfortunately, but it seems a clash of heads is what opened up the cuts that eventually halted the Accavallo fight, and were a prevalent factor throughout (or so his trainer complained). Tanabe was winning the fight, though. Had him on the deck twice in earlier rounds. Whether the direction the fight went was as a direct result of the butts is up to speculation. http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...AIBAJ&pg=3428,2799392&dq=kiyoshi+tanabe&hl=en
He looked excellent against Accavallo, troubling him with his quicker hands and feet, but without a long fight to see how he travels over the distance it's hard to gauge just how good he was. He may have been a Zab Judah type for all we know. I will say that Accavallo did seem to be edging his way back into that fight before the cut-stoppage, and I think he may have come on late, though that's only speculation based on how the fight was trending. Tanabe's athelticism was certainly impressive though... Accavallo didn't have much of a clue early on about what to do. And he's no Jose Luis Ramirez when it comes to speed either....
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RxLoAQmg18&lc=qEKp5kj63FlYXyUE6gSrEuvXKN6eirpv3XJy_9SNyNY&feature=inbox[/ame]