Kyokugen 2017: Ryoichi Taguchi vs. Milan Melindo & Sho Kimura vs. Toshiyuki Igarashi RBR.

Current unified champions
Golovkin, Joshua, Thurman, Burnett and Taguchi.

 

What was the third (or maybe the first?) official scorecard? 116-112. 117-111, and?

 

Respect to the warrior that is Melindo. Great 2017 for him. Real competitive unification fight. Opened a lot of eyes this year but still being looked down on and underestimated. Congrats to Taguchi.

 

Gotta give credit to Melindo for showing so much heart in the fight and afterwards with him raising Taguchi's hand after he won.

 

Competitive? it was a one sided beating.

 

Opened eyes? He has always been a middle of the pack contender, I don't see how any result this year changes that

 

If you base it on faces, yes, Melindo is in a lot of one-sided beatings.

 

I'd argue that 3 world class wins (however competitive they might be) including 2 on Japanese soil against worl champions would be impressive. Fight of the year doesn't need to be an elite killer, for me the guy with 3 good wins beats a guy with 1 good win (GGG), or beating guys from divisions below (Lomachenko), or beating a 40 year old 2 years removed from his last win (Joshua).

Srisaket would be my pick either way, but had Melindo blown out Taguchi that would have been a VERY good year.

It's like no one is talking about Ken Shiro, but he's had two top tier wins (albeit by MD) agaunst Lopez and Guevara....a good year by anyone's standards... Kyoguchi had had 10 rounds prior to this year yet went 4-0 claimed OPBF an world honours, the progress from last to this year should be considered. Melindo might not be elite but 3 wins at genuine world level would be impressive ESPECIALLY if he's not elite...

 

Yup he opened a lot of eyes. You may disagree, but if he won today, he would’ve been a decent candidate for FOTY, and a lot of people who pay attention to the lower weights would agree. Wouldn’t have been my winner but an honorable mention-worthy year nonetheless. A lot of people, including myself, thought he was far too inconsistent to even win a world title but that’s exactly what he did. No matter how many wars Yaegashi has been in or how many close fights Budler has fought, those were two world class opponents that he beat and he was damn competitive in what was a unification/RING magazine championship match. Whether he remains consistent at world level after this loss remains to be seen, but props to him. Dude is world class.

 

Ioka IS officially retiring live on TV!

 

Full story http://www.asianboxing.info/asian-news/kazuto-ioka-retires-live-on-tv

 

I just saw that Keith Thurman was in attendance.