This fight is a very interesting fight and a good one. Rose was the Bantamweight Champion of the World after dethroning Fighting Harada in Japan. Whilst Rose was in Japan a Bantmaweight contender Takaruo Sakuri watched Rose in the gym then studied the fight with Harada. Now he was fighting Rose. Sakuri had a great gameplan he was a tall southpaw that fought out of a crouch and was a good conter puncher. He set traps behind his jab and lure dhis opponents in. For Rose he made Rose lead and led him onto his counters behind a jab. He had great sucess doing this measuring Rose with a jab then countering with his straigth left. In the 2nd he caught Rose on the chin with his counter dropping him. The fight kept this rythm as Sakuri was cagey and clever drawing Rose on as Rose unusually was forced to lead and was having diffculty judging the distance of Sakuri. Around the 6th Rose started to controll the distance behind his jab and had more sucess as he feinted his movement and landed and stood off instead of going forward for the counter, Rose then started to take command and in the 9th Rose sharp shooted Sakuri with right hands, left hooks behind his jab as he drew Sakuri into a fight. Sakuri adjusted and went back to his gameplan but Rose kept the iniative till the 13th with the fight about even Rose's experiance shined through as he breezed through the Championship rounds and had Sakuri all over the ring in the last two holding on for dear life. My scorecard Rose: 3,6,7,9,10,12,13,14 Sakuri:1,2,4,5,8,11 Total: 9-6 Very good fight Anyone else seen it? thoughts?
Yeah, that fight intrigued me at the time..I had to just imagine the fight really, based on the reports of it in the bxing mags at the time, as there was next to nothing mentioned of it in the glorified bird cage liner known as the "sports page" of my local paper. Sakarai surprised Rose with that early kd, but Rose was the stronger of the two, and rallied to impose his will over the Japanese challenger. This was just before Rose fought Castillo, and got decked a little harder in that one...signalling Lionel's achilles heel perhaps..being a bit vulnerable in the chin department..a fact that Ruben Olivares was able to capitalise on fatally for Rose.
I've got it Greg. I've only really watched bits of pieces. I might watch it through tonight and get back to you on it.
Mission accomplished. GPater would have been sleeping with the fairies, but I stayed up and watched it live. An epic battle, and my pick for fight of the year this year. I had Martinez winning narrowly.
I haven't seen it yet, i've been looking on youtube to no avail. By the way Greg, Did you know that Sakaurai was the Gold medallist at bantam in the 64 Olympics?
have you seen it yet? Very interesting battle of brains and game plans and i thought Rose's adaptability won it for him as he was the one who made changes to his game to win. But Sakuri had one hell of a gameplan. Yes, it was Its a good one, after it i wondered how Sakuri would do against your Dad that would be a good fight that either man could take I had Martinez winning by way of taking the last 2 but they could have went either way i just preferred his cleaner shots to Williams workrate. Was a proper good fight though but JMM vs Diaz is still my pick for FOTY. Also with a computer like mine can you blame me for sleeping through it Its a good fight, lots of twists and turns aswell as a relentless pace and good technical skills Didnt know that about Sakuri but I seen he was well skilled and a tricky customer, very very cagey
