By Ronnie Nathanielsz
The painful succession of defeats suffered by overmatched Filipino boxers in Thailand and Japan has been broken by talented super flyweight Eric Barcelona who scored a big win over Hiroshi Nakano at the Park Arena in Komaki, Sunday.
The hard-hitting, 23 year old southpaw who is rated No. 6 by the Oriental Pacific Boxing Federation hammered Nakano into submission at 0:37 seconds of the fourth round to improve his record to 29-7-4 with 10 knockouts according to boxrec.com. Barcelona was coming off an unfortunate fifth round technical decision loss to world-rated Diosdado Gabi last April 10.
It was only the second defeat of Nakano, also a southpaw but seven years older than Barcelona. Boxrec said his record is now 21-2 with 12 KO’s. In his last fight Nakano scored a seventh round KO over Thailand’s Petchklongpai Sor Thantip last February 13.
Two other Filipinos however, were beaten on the same fight card. Veteran Jeffrey Onate lost by a fifth round technical decision to Ryuhei Sugita, the Japanese super featherweight. All three judges had Sugita ahead by scores of 49-47, 49-46 and 49-47 when the bout was stopped.
Gilbert De La Torre lost a ten round unanimous decision to Toshikazu Waga by scores of 99-90, 99-92 and 98-94. In his last fight the 23 year old De La Torre lost by a second round TKO to Oriental Pacific Boxing Federation No.1 minimum weight Makoto Suzuki while Waga was coming off a majority ten round decision over Daisuke Iida.