Toshiaki Nishioka vs. Veeraphol Sahaprom rivalry

Sahaprom clearly came out better in the end. I had him 2-1-1 and thefourth fight was a whitewash. Sahaprom landed the right hand seemingly at will throughout their fights. When Nishioka gained the upper hand it was with handspeed and a bit of flash IMO. Considering how good he is now and the size advantage he had, the fact Sahaprom managed to establish himself with the same technical approach each fight leading into the last showed he was the better man and showed the Jap' as a man training to make weight.

With hindsight, a legacy affirming scalp for him it seems. If you like him, check out his fight with Daorung Chuvatana, a brilliant contest between two of Thailand's best boxer-punchers.

 

Agree with flea. The first 3 demonstrated the sort of even keel rivalry that pac-jmm has.

The last 1 was slightly out of context and i'm still not sure if it demonstrates how far nishioka had to improve, or how good sah was.

 

Sahaprom's right hand really gets a good airing in this series. Quality tool that, often used as a jab-like reminder. Awkward ******* for such a straight-up guy.

Luf: did he ever jump on your Bantamweight lineage? I never felt he truly attained the no.1 status in the division, despite the lack of unifications happening anyway.

 

my BW premiere fighter is quite messy and like all of my others it's just in the interim stages so far (Out of about 400 guys I've evaluated to my content just 32 and 3 didn't have adequate footage)

But I have it going:

Austin 97-99 [Ayala beats Tapia]
Ayala 99-01 [Austin beats Singwancha]
Austin 01-03 [Lost]
Marquez 03-06 [Hasagawa beats Garcia]
Hasegawa 06-10 [Lost]

I'm going over all my work with a fine tooth comb so I'll eventually tidy it out but to answer yopur question, no he never made it, imo, as the number 1.

 

Sahaprom was a better fighter than Marquez or Austin.Not necessarily any more deserving of a no.1 spot(none of them really deserved being named the divisions best), but a more gifted rounded fighter certainly.

 

Are you saying this because you feel Sahaprom's career was overlooked by american/british/etc fans and Marquez because of his fights on US soil against marquee fighters is a bit overrated especially in the all time mexican greats lists?

Or do you just rate Sahaprom highly?

Just curious.

 

the latter.Though i recognise he didn't really do enough to distinguish himself, same as flea and luf.

The first is true to an extent as well, but it could have been true if Marquez had been flat out better than sahaprom.if i thought he was i'd have no problem saying it, even if i thought he was a bit overexposed in comparison.

 

If the 3 had a round robin how do you think it'd have panned out?

 

I'd say the third fight was the one where Sahaprom truly got the right hand working.

Which was a bit surprising as you would expect younger Nishioka to get the upper hand over aging Sahaprom as the rivalry progressed.

I had the same results.

Although i didn't score the fights just relied on general impression.

How did you score the first 2 fights?

 

It's in the scorecard thread somewhere :good

I think Marquez's lofty reputation ranks on him beating Austin: due to Austin being hyped at the time.

 

Hmm I said earlier this year I wanted to do more research on Japanese fighters so I'll do that for Nishi and a bit for Saha. Never would have bothered without this thread, thanks. ESB is great this way and it's a shame threads like this aren't 50 million pages long.

 

:good

Your winners are identical to mine.

Too bad only the fourth fight was scored accurately by the officials.
And it was the easiest fight to score.

 

I love Nishioka at the moment and I think he'd stand a good chance to beat Donaire.

I was really getting into the sport with Saha was at his peak and he was one hell of a fighter, very versatile with a lot going for him. One of the better bantam fighters I've seen.

That said, Marquez is even better if you as me. I've said this numerous times and I always get **** for it but I think Marquez is a top 3-4 bantam head to head all time. I honestly think in a three fight series he could post a win or two over Olivares, Harada, Zarate et al. I just think he was that good, especially at his peak, between the win over Frissana and the second Mabuza fight.

That said, Saha gives him a great fight, but I don't think Nishioka's win over him is indicative of what would happen if he met Marquez in their respective primes. Marquez had been through hell and back a few times against Vaquez and beaten down brutally by Lopez.

 

Very good fights although ones I don't remember being particularly close. I'll have to go back and re-score them all but I can't remember initially scoring any one of them for Nishioka. I think it was the second one I had down as a draw with Sahaprom edging the third, but the first was a clear one for Sahaprom iirc and like others have already said, the last one was a complete towsing. These fights plus the Chuvatana one and others like them showed me enough to generate a fair amount of confidence that Sahaprom like lora has said was better than either Austin or Marquez and would have beaten them both imo though not without difficulty. Austin's height and range would probably have been troublesome, especially if he chose to sit back, but I think Sahaprom would have carefully stepped around him and worked his way into control with the straight right doing a few overtime shifts and taking away the southpaw advantage gradually over the course with his better timing and enough power in both mitts to keep Austin honest. He put up enough of a fight as an old man against a much better fighter than Austin in Hasegawa first time around to make me believe that handling a taller, faster athletic lefty type would have been well within his capabilities. Marquez was a very good fighter but too wide-stanced, defensively naive and without generalship in spite of his offensive talents and punching form. His power would have made him very dangerous but Sahaprom was a good puncher himself and sneaky with it, enough so for me to work his his own shots inside Marquez's slightly wider ones. Marquez has been a spartan and has my everlasting gratitude and admiration for what Vasquez and he did, but he isn't/wasn't a great fighter .

The top end pure boxers and movers would have been able to outmanoevre Sahaprom with the top boxer-punchers outpunching him and top swarmers outworking him. The masters of each particular style, so to speak, none of which Marquez was and Austin certainly wasn't. But anyone in between, style and ability-wise both, would have been in for some rough going against him more often than not, as Nishioka (a pretty good fighter himself) found out.

I think I'll watch the second and third fights again and score them because I can't remember too much about them, so my initial recollection might be a bit off.