by Ronnie Nathanielsz
Former world flyweight champion Malcolm Tunacao has retained his Oriental and Pacific Boxing Federation bantamweight title with a unanimous twelve round decision over world rated and undefeated Kohei Oba of Japan at the International Conference Hall in Nagoya, Japan.
All three judges scored the fight for Tunacao, the shifty, 31 year old southpaw by identical 116-112 margins over Oba who is ranked No. 5 by the WBC and No. 9 by the WBA.
With the win Tunacao improved to 26-2-3 with 15 knockouts while Oba who suffered his first defeat dropped to 27-1-1 with 11 knockouts.
Tunacao won the vacant OPBF 118 pound title with a comfortable decision over Seung Suk Chae of Korea on February 6, 2010 while OBA won the Japan bantamweight title with a ten round unanimous decision over Masayuki Mitani on February 24, 2008 and defended it successfully five times.
Oba was coming off a ten round unanimous decision over Filipino veteran Eric Barcelona on March 7, 2010.
