By Ronnie Nathanielsz

Undefeated WBC International super bantamweight champion Balweg Bangoyan suffered a 5th round TKO at the hands of Japan’s Toshiaki Nishioka in a WBC title fight in Tokyo on Friday.

Ranked No. 10 by the WBC, “The Davao Hitman” appeared to be outclassed by the Japanese southpaw and Bangoyan paid the price for his recklessness when Nishioka nailed him with a vicious left that dropped the Filipino early in round five.

Although Bangoyan beat the count and tried to fight back he was still groggy and Nishioka was all over the challenger before Mexican referee Gelacio Perez stepped in and called a halt at 1:14 of the fifth round.

It was the comparatively inexperienced Bangoyan’s first fight abroad and his first loss which once again spotlighted the tendency to rush promising young fighters into title fights when they are not quite ready.

In fact Bangoyan had struggled in his last two fights winning a twelve round majority decision over the slow-moving Raymond Sermona to grab the vacant international title on September 12, 2009 after earlier winning a ten round majority decision over veteran Jaime Barcelona on June 27, 2009..

With the win Nishioka improved to 36-4-3 with 23 knockouts while Bangoyan dropped to 15-1 with 6 knockouts.

Bangoyan is a  23 year old protégé of Jose Abad Santos Mayor Zander Khan but as we mentioned in a pre-fight story the promising prospect but may find that he doesn’t have the experience at this point in his career to face off against a puncher as efficient as the 33 year old Nishioka.

Nishioka won the title with an impressive 12th round TKO over Genaro Garcia in a fight refereed by Bruce McTavish on March 1 last year and then scored a stunning 3rd round TKO over former world champion Jhonny Gonzalez of Mexico on May 23rd before forcing Ivan Hernandez to retire in the 3rd round of a title fight on October 10.