Ryōsuke "Eagle Eye" Iwasa

Remember when Shinsuke Yamanaka and Ryosuke Iwasa produced a dark horse FOTY candidate in 2011?

Remember how everyone, upon seeing it, projected that both would go on to achieve big things beyond the shores of the Land of the Rising Sun, assuming they hadn't totally ruined each other?

Well, in his very next outing later that same year, after eight months of recovery, Yamanaka would capture the WBC 118lb title. He is about to make his eighth consecutive defense of it, and has along the way more or less cleaned out the division and become the clear #1 bantamweight in the world.

As for his greatest domestic rival? Well...you could say Iwasa has done alright for himself. Picking up the Japanese bantamweight title as consolation prize for the loss to Yamanaka (when the latter vacated it to move on to greener pastures) and making a couple of defenses is all well and nice...as is later becoming the Oriental & Pacific bantamweight champ. Still, though - in five years since their meeting, Yamanaka has fought a who's-who at the weight. Iwasa has mostly fought a bunch of "who???" - his best accomplishments being a quick knockout of Rasmanudin, and shutout of David De La Mora. (neither of which even had any hardware on the line, although both probably trump all his actual Japanese & OPBF title wins)

His dry spell of quality opposition was supposed to at last come to an end recently with an IBF world title eliminator against Sergio Perales. The prize would be a shot at Randy Caballero, which in turn would give Iwasa leverage to rematch Yamanaka with the pot sweetened by world title unification. Unfortunately, on short notice, Perales withdrew injured, and Iwasa had to revert this morning to dispatching yet another undistinguished foe plucked from the obscure ranks of the multitudes of Asian journeymen in the weight range - and without any television coverage. A step up can not come a moment too soon for Iwasa, who is lately exhibiting signs of fighting down to his opposition's level as evidenced by his only managing to defend his OPBF belt via MD over 14-5-2 Richard Pumicpic.

Iwasa craves that crack at Caballero - who already has shown willingness to come to Japan, for his own IBF eliminator with Kohei Oba before defeating Stuart Hall for the belt. If he lands it, that will be great news for not only Iwasa but the fans. That could well become Iwasa's 2nd FOTY candidate.

 

That would be ****ing epic.

 

Iwasa vs. Yamanaka, for any poor unfortunate soul that has never seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soSX6rih9-A

Some of his subsequent work, probably seen by only a precious few outside Japan...

Iwasa vs. Murai:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wu7eRV6sL0

Iwasa vs. Masuda:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS0DlVYJfyg

Iwasa vs. Yap:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swmdd1r2oHg

Iwasa vs. Shiino:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MihiNfjlLfg


His fight against DDLM was the co-feature to Gamaliel Diaz vs. Takahiro Aoh, which is on YouTube and was televised - but Iwasa vs. De La Mora itself doesn't seem to be. :conf


The one I'm very interested to find would be Iwasa vs. Pumicpic, who according to AsianBoxing.info did give him a very hard time with the close scoring accurately reflection the action. (they also consider Pumicpic to be 'criminally underrated' despite his record)

 

Kinda more like a baby Dalí almost. :think

http://lonerwolf.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/young-salvador-dali.jpg


...but yeah, I see a bit of the Carradine too.

 

Yeah, he got a rocky few years' start to his career, losing seven of his first eleven, but Kentaro since 2010 has really turned it around. 14-2 and the losses were forgivable enough - a close one to Otake (who just challenged for a world title and is Japanese 122lb champ) and of course Iwasa.

 

Julio Ceja eliminator possibly next.

 

:think