True4U: Tasana Salapat (aka Petch CP Freshmart) vs. Chēnghào Luō RBR

Round 10

Luō jabbing, then guarding as Salapat jabs in multiples. Slicing upward hook by Luō, missing but only intended to provide a smokescreen for him to reposition anyway. Salapat with a 1-2. Luō rushes in and tries scoring a quick right hook before retreating. Salapat loads up with a decapitating hook and just misses Luō as he's pulling away. Luō tries reaching past a Salapat jab with a right hook but can't get there. Jabs in each other's face at the bell. They smile and hug.

10-9 Salapat

99-91 Salapat

 

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Just found out it's incompatible with my current model smartphone, which is too new for it. I hate that they do that and more things aren't backwards compatible, would've been a nice surprise for LB to download this again for old time's sake.

 

Official cards:

Chainat Hanwiset 96-94
Phanu Kusolwong 96-94
Thanapat Suakaew 97-93

UD for Salapat

 

Chēnghào is very good for an out and out rookie when it comes to high level international competition...held his own, maybe not as much as the judges gave him credit for but he can definitely build off this and be a player on the Asian scene. Just no match for perhaps the most legitimate member of the CPF stable bar Knockout.

 

Actually yeah between Salapat and Petchmanee/Pradabsri that's a really tough call. The latter has the pair of high profile victories over Moonsri and so the superior résumé, but I'm not sure he's better. Having the number of a guy I always felt was overrated only counts for so much.

 

Curiosity bug gave me a bite after that last comment, decided to look more closely.

Leaving aside hype job Menayothin/Moonsri, their wins are pretty much a wash. Norihito Tanaka is Pradabsri's second best scalp (and they're having a rematch later this month, giving him the opportunity to go 4-0 against his pair of greatest opponents) and is maybe himself better than any single victory of Salapat's, but once you get past Moonsri and Tanaka virtually all of Pradabsri's are rubbish - whereas Salapat's record is chock full of guys like Rosia, Lagos, and Luō today who are hardly walkovers. In fairness to Pradabsri, though, really good east Asian journeymen are in much readier supply at bantam than at minimumweight.

Each has one career loss, several years removed now - Salapat against young then-unbeaten prospect and current world champ Takuma Inoue via UD on the Masayuki Itō vs. Evgeny Alexandrovich Chuprakov undercard (117-111 x3, also my scorecard but it was closer than those cards suggest) and Pradabsri to aging former world titlist Chaozhong Xiong via MD, a fourteen months earlier. I can't find any record on this board of a live RBR thread or anybody ever mentioning their score for that one after the fact (searching both variants of Xiong's given name and his surname as well as Pradabsri's real and current/previous sponsorship names), but there is an upload of it available online:

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Might give it a spin for comparison's sake.

All things being equal, a game 117-111 loss to a 12-0 hungry Inoue counts for less of (certainly no more of) a ding than going life & death with an old Xiong.

Niyomtrong is still the man in the CP Freshmart stable - and p4p in the country, for now (I think he performed far better than Pradabsri h2h versus Tanaka, Moonsri, and Xiong) but the number two spot by either reckoning is very much up in the air.

 

Bagging a world title would cinch it for Salapat - which in his division would have seemed impossible several months ago with the larger than life presence of Naoya Inoue. With the Monster vacating all his belts to go chasing Fulton at super bantam, however, there's a power vacuum at 118lbs - and the man formerly known as Chitpattana is currently ranked #6 by the WBC.

Chēnghào Luō wasn't in the WBC's top 40, so today won't help advance his cause much, but Salapat could be a fight or two away from competing for the vacant world title. Among the five men in the rankings ahead of him there's another Thai, actually - Nawaphon Kaikanha. That would be a terrific fight.