If the big guns run away, he will immediately move to bantamweight! Jyunjin Nakatani, who is too strong, reveals his “too unexpected problem”.
On September 18, Jyunjin Nakatani, 25, defended his WBO super flyweight title with a 12 round decision win in the ring at the Ariake Arena. It was a complete victory, taking down the challenger, Arj Cortez (28), three times.
This was Nakatani’s first defense of the WBO super flyweight title, having won the world title in two weight classes following the flyweight title. The theme of the fight was “win carefully.
Right from the start of the fight, Nakatani feinted with his right fist and side-swiped with his jab, a strategy he had tried many times during the 236 rounds of sparring he did during his stay in Los Angeles from July 20 to September 2. He did not allow Cortes, a bull fighter, to get too close and fought at his own distance throughout the fight.
Nakatani always practices by assuming the worst-case scenario in a fight. His 236 rounds in the LA camp were more than double the number of top Japanese fighters in world title fights. Many Japanese fighters who hear this number say, “If I spar that much, I will break down.
Nakatani, who had sparred with a number of partners, imagining himself in a tight spot, prepared himself for the defense. Cortez, on the other hand, spent 10 weeks sparring 18 rounds a week to challenge for the WBO super flyweight title.
The champion recalls.
‘Cortez was having a hard time getting into my pocket, so I took a position that he didn’t like even more. I thought I could jab more, but my opponent had a wide range of movement from side to side, moving his head and so on, so I spent more time following him with my eyes. During the interval, he instructed me to ‘hit him in the gloves with a jab, then hit him in the face,’ which I did.”
In the fifth round, Nakatani sank Cortez with a straight left hand from long range aimed at the dove-tail (groin). After spitting out his mouthpiece to buy time for the challenger, he landed two more right hooks to the body, sending him to his knees on the canvas again.
I expected the body to hit,” Cortes said, “but my initial plan was to land a left body hook when my opponent landed a straight right hand. But I was hungry, so I landed a straight left, and the second time Cortez went down, it was a fluke. The second time Cortez went down, I went for it because he was damaged and wasn’t guarding his body.
