By Ronnie Nathanielsz
The Philippines undefeated WBC International super bantamweight champion Balweg Bangoyan faces a tough task when he battles Japan’s reigning WBC champion Toshiaki Nishioka in Tokyo on Friday.
Ranked No. 10 by the WBC, “The Davao Hitman” 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.
The 23 year old protégé of former singer, now Jose Abad Santos Mayor Zander Khan is a 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 who has a record of 35-4-3 with 22 knockouts.
Despite the world title fight being his first fight abroad Zander Khan believes that at 33 Nishioka may be over the hill and he likes his fighter’s chances because he said Balweg “is at his peak and has been working very hard” in his preparation for the title shot.
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.
In an interesting coincidence well known international referee McTavish who has lived in the Philippines for over 40 years was the third man in the ring when Nishioka won the world title and Bangoyan grabbed the international crown.
