Sho Kimura: record, next fight and profile →
Despite having only five professional bouts under his belt, Paddy Barnes is already targeting the biggest fights at Flyweight. The Triple-Olympian is coming off a career-best performance against Eliecer Quezada in November. He halted the Nicaraguan in the sixth round with a crushing body blow to score his first career stoppage and pick up the WBO Inter-Continental belt.
In one of the bigger upsets of 2017, unheralded Japanese fighter Sho Kimura stopped famed two-time Olympic gold medalist Zou Shiming to claim the WBO flyweight belt. Kimura was a big underdog against the ex-champion from China, thus his Cinderella story wasn’t expected to last for long. But the doubters were silenced again when Kimura stopped Toshiyuki Igarashi, a former WBC flyweight champion and the WBO’s No. 1-rated challenger, in the ninth rounds of bloody, fan-friendly affair Sunday night in Tokyo.
Chinese boxing star Zou Shiming vowed Monday to "fight until my last breath" to recover the title he lost in Shanghai when he was knocked out in his first defence of the WBO flyweight crown. Two-time Olympic gold medallist Zou was a strong favourite to beat Sho Kimura on Friday, but he ran out of juice as the fight wore on and the younger Japanese silenced a rowdy home crowd with an 11th-round upset victory.
Kimura, given no chance by bookies at 10-1 and only ranked seventh in the WBO, stopped the two-time Olympic champion with a flourish of punches late in the 11th round of the 12-round contest before Zou collapsed under the onslaught and waved no more to a stunned capacity crowd at the Shanghai Oriental Sports Centre.
Tomorrow in Shanghai, 36-year old Zou Shiming (9-1, 2 KO) will attempt to add the one thing currently missing from his trophy case. He’s got three Olympic Gold medals. He’s got three additional amateur world championships. Last November, in his second chance to snag it, he added a major professional title, winning the vacant IBF flyweight title in a rematch with a Thailand’s Kwanpichit OnesongchaitGym.