Kittithat Ungsrivongs vs. Agus Kustiawan & Tanawat Nakoon vs. Melianus Mirin RBR

Yeah, this one is over. Scorecards about to be read.

 

Official cards:

Kitvipat Boonpuen 97-93
Perez Sakul 97-93
Anupong Sakul 97-93

UD for Nakoon

 

...and now the embarrassing ordeal of the victor getting the spoils of having to stand there all sweaty and rather than bask in the glow of triumph soaking up the adulation of fans, or backstage with their loved ones and team - having old men hand them giant matte sponsor cards which they in turn hand to old men on the other side of them.

 

Super shady. The WBC ABC strawweight title has been contested over two dozen times since Kittiping Jaigrajang (aka Oleydong Sithsamerchai) held it 13 years ago - all of them 12-rounders.

Shady as in shades of Sonny Bill Williams vs. Francois Botha there...

Oh well. No guarantee Mirin would keep up his momentum in the eleventh and twelfth (and even if he did, on my card it would only earn him a draw) but still. Weird. BoxRec had both this and the co-feature listed as 12-rounders until just a few minutes ago. So the promoter or commission in Thailand is feeding them real-time information, and that "correction" in the # of rounds for both title fights may have just coincidentally happened to come in super late...

 

Walkout bout to round out the Ch.7 2-hour broadcast slot.

Tassana Sanpattan vs. Tran Dong Du, 8 rounds @ super bantamweight

 

Southpaw versus southpaw. The visitor is Vietnamese, bucking the trend of the main televised bouts. (c-c-c-c-c-combo breaker!)

Two more bouts that probably won't make it on TV feature one Filipino (Richard Rosales) and one Chinese (Enxiong Tian, in his pro debut) visitor.

 

Du is taking a horrendous beating.

...and small wonder! His record is 0-1. He made his professional debut in December, here in Bangkok, against none other than former champ Kittipong Jaigragang.

Sanpattan is 44-0. Jaigragan was 66-1-1 when he fought Du, whom he retired after 3.

Du has five rounds' pro experience (including those boxed so far here today) and his opponents have a combined record of 111-1-1.

 

Mercy stoppage. Leave Du alone, you Thai bullies!

Du the right thing, Bangkok commission, and rip up his license, please.

 

You could see the poor guy's teeth rattling from punches on his shoulder. (and that was just the rare miss for Sanpattan, he was pretty much given a practice dummy to spar with here, and permitted to cream him for way too long past the point where it was obviously never going to be competitive)

 

This was kind of a star-studded event for the WBC in conjunction with the CP Freshmart stable, it turns out.

A former world champ (Thaiyen) and established contender (Sanpattan, the current WBC Youth Silver champ with fourteen defenses to his credit) in support of a couple of youngsters going for their first regional belts. Nice way to build the kids' profiles.

As of a few hours ago the event page on BoxRec only had the co-main events listed. The other four bouts on the card (including the pair with the big aforementioned names) just got added while it was in progress.

 

Ungsrivongs vs. Kustiawan:

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Thaiyen vs. Kisamlu:

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Nakoon vs. Mirin:

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Sanpattan vs. Du:

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Oh wow, the homeland fans are pretty brutal on the comments section of Nakoon's video. In just a matter of hours there's a spate of criticisms:

"Lack of strength with the punch, not heavy enough"
"Develop further please"
"I'm not sure there's anything to see with you"
"Lift some weights, build up the muscles in your chest and shoulders"
"You're pretty far off from where you ought to be"

Guess they don't appreciate technicians over there! Now we start to get some insight on why a guy like their famous CP Freshmart stableman Thammanon Niyomtrong would go with a moniker like the mononymous "Knockout" to raise his profile domestically, when in reality you can plainly see by his 44% rate of stoppage (or simply conducting the eye test & watching him perform) that he is more of a boxer than a puncher.

Don't get me wrong. There is room for improvement with Nakoon. He only just squeaked by on my card and is, ahem, "lucky" this was scheduled for 10. But uh ...this was his fourth pro bout. A close but clear decision over a tough, determined, hard-hitting guy like Mirin is a good experiential step for him at this point, and the rounds that he lost can be chalked up to his learning curve. I don't begrudge him not getting the stoppage; I'm not sure Mirin has ever been so much as dropped.