TBS Japan: Kazuto Ioka vs. Kōsei Tanaka & Yuki Strong Kobayashi vs. Daigo Higa RBR

Here, going to backfill my scoring for the rounds my laptop shat the bed and I was left watching in my phone unable to multitask...

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Round 4

Tanaka is doing a clockwise butterfly float and flicking up a backhanded jab off the hip into the champion's face. Tanaka being a pest, scoring and peeling away to his left before Ioka can retaliate, or draping a heavy right hand over the top to clobber Ioka down into a submissive crouching turtle shell and sometimes initiate a clinch depending on hos far in his own momentum carries him. Ioka tries popping up with left hooks from a defensive squat but timing isn't quite down pat. Tanaka just a blur of frenetic energy, making Ioka play catch-up and concentrate on picking off shots in multiples from a variety of angles. That said, Ioka getting licks in where he can and making them count.

10-9 Tanaka, super close

39-37 Tanaka


Round 5

Tanaka is playing with fire, staying with the same tricks and finding that Ioka's accuracy with the counter left hook is drastically improving not just round to round but minute to minute. Tanaka flurrying and slapping the underside of his right forearm across the nape of Ioka's neck as much as he can get away with, perhaps aiming to sap the older man's stamina with rough clinches. ATG, PERFECTLY EXECUTED 2-3 BY IOKA FROM AGAINST THE ROPES, TANAKA WENT DOWN LIKE HE WAS SNIPED FROM THE GRASSY KNOLL. Lucky the bell rang essentially the moment he beat the count...

10-8 Ioka

47-47


Round 6

Tanaka is wary now, circling and eating Ioka jabs at medium-long range. Ioka forcing the issue and ripping into the body. Tanaka backs him off with a heavy right but looking disjointed now, making more mistakes, leaving his chin thrust up and out while he throws and standing stock still and falling in a bit as he does. Ioka watching, processing, stalking, and moving in to test the waters with single jabs and hooks here and there. Tanaka gets bored or impatient and starts jumping in to attack and is DROPPED AGAIN. Sweeping left hook, took the long way home but Ioka sent it whistling with the most speed he could muster and timed its arc perfectly with Tanaka's onward rush so that it corresponded perfectly with him arriving in range. Tanaka grins and nods in acknowledgment and macho denial of having been hurt. This time more left on the clock than in the fifth and Tanaka makes a point of slugging it out with Ioka to save face.

10-8 Ioka

57-55 Ioka


Round 7

Tanaka is seeking to regain the upper hand, and using his left to meet that end. Ioka skips away, indulging the youth... for a minute. Ioka now ripping triple left hooks on the body and stuffing a right-handed grenade in the kid's mouth before shelling up and hopping onto his invisible carousel steed, gripping its pole with his right glove responsibly held up by his chin. Boy, you won't find better offense-to-defense transition than in Ioka. Tanaka is desperately jumping in, crowding Ioka, banging his own lefts into his barn doors, and lashing down with rights on the shorter man, perhaps in an attempt to get him ducking statically again or maybe crown him with a partial rabbit punch. I think Tanaka will take any port in this storm now.

10-9 Ioka

67-64 Ioka


Round 8

Tanaka is playing chicken with Ioka for the first thirty seconds, both pushing out a few jab feints, nothing more, a full pace apart. Tanaka is first to get his blood up, marching in with high heavy hooks. Ioka keeps it cool and collected, guard up, laser-sighted counter jabs finding the mark. Tanaka with a shoeshine on the body after backing Ioka into the ropes and then slowly chasing him to the adjacent set. Ioka suddenly sets his feet and lands an EVEN SNEAKIER, MORE FLUID AND MORE TEXTBOOK STRAIGHT-RIGHT-AND-LEFT-HOOK COMBO THAN IN THE FIFTH, JESUS!

TKO8!!!! AND STILL!!!!!

 

I concur. Part of me wants to see him put that icing on his legacy's cake, but I'm not sure the gamble is worth the risk of the image of him getting annihilated...that'd be too sad. I'd kind of rather he retire never having been stopped as befits the goddamn Tungsten Carbide warrior he is.

 

What'd you think of his Ali-esque taunt standing over Kobayashi?

Seemed a bit much to me, and out of place in the usually relatively polite atmosphere of Japanese domestic competition... did the pair of them have personal beef or lots of trash-talk in the lead-up or something?

 

...and yeah, in any normal year that would've been the Uppercut of 2020. But still pales to Sasha's.

 

I can't think of any but tbh I missed a lot, even aside from the pandemic my viewing habit was already in a deep wane.

 

Just saw this, assuming you're just making a crack about what some of my over-enthused fellow lefties in the West term 'cultural appropriation', not referencing something I'm unaware of like Ioka having a Michael Richards moment (god I hope not..)

 

How do we feel about Ioka vs. Yaegashi II as both men's retirement match?

I wanted that one for YEARS, but...idk. Akira has looked shaky at times (if heroic at others). I worry it wouldn't be the competitive thing it might once have been.

 

Yep, that's my feeling too...but he did show just enough flashes versus Mthalane (hell, swept the first half on my card!) to plant the seed of "but maybe.."

 

Donnie Nietes is officially permanently outta the game, right? No chance of avenging that? Shame..