Say what you will about the sport. You cannot deny the unscripted magic of Ricardo Sandoval’s victorious journey to Japan to dethrone a unified, two-division champion.

In a stirring and unexpected showing in Yokohama, California’s Sandoval got off the canvas and claimed a split-decision triumph over Japan’s Kenshiro Teraji by scores of 113-114, 115-112, 117-110 Wednesday to become the WBC and WBA flyweight champion against a fighter who’s already participated in a fight-of-the-year candidate.

“It feels great. All the hard work paid off,” Sandoval 27-2 (18 KOs) said in victory. “I never stopped working since I was 10 years old. Now we’re here, and we’re [a two-belt] champion.” 

The triumph is all the more stunning considering the events of the past year, when Sandoval, 26, of Rialto, California, struggled in a disputed 10th-round knockout victory over former light-flyweight champion Angel Acosta in a hometown fight one year ago this month in Ontario, California.

In that bout, it appeared the referee stopped the bout prematurely, and a review of scorecards favoring Sandoval surprised many who watched the fight.

Promoted by Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, Sandoval vowed to do better in his next bout, and posted a wide victory in Anaheim, California, in February, over Saleto Henderson by remaining highly active and relentless, parlaying his top-four ranking among all sanctioning bodies into a title shot.

Wednesday night, Sandoval’s manager, Abraham Perez of SOA Boxing in Orange, California, penned a recap of the events, underlining just how astounding it was.

Headlined, “Enemy territory. Two belts. One dream,” Perez wrote, “We went into enemy territory with nearly everyone against us. But that’s nothing new for ‘El Nino’ Ricardo Sandoval. He’s already conquered the U.K. [with a 2021 victory there], and he’s undefeated in every country outside the U.S.

“This time, we faced one of the best – ranked No. 9 pound-for-pound in the world. Just Ricardo and his team in his corner. No fanfare. No favoritism. Just belief, grit and heart.”

(A quick sidenote here: Perez took another outsider, Jorge Chavez, into the hostile Indio, California, hometown den of Manuel Flores Thursday night, posting a draw that should earn a deserved rematch, telling BoxingScene at night’s end, “Now, we’re off to Japan to win a title with Ricardo Sandoval.”)

Continued Perez: “We’ve had our share of setbacks. We’ve been doubted. Counted out. We’ve come up short more times than we’d like to remember. But this time – on foreign soil, under the brightest lights, against a champion defending a title for the 13th time – we made it count.

“We shocked the world. We dethroned a king.

“Now, we go home with not one, but two world titles.

“Ricardo Sandoval, who holds a bachelor’s degree in business, doesn’t need boxing – he lives for it. He eats, sleeps, breathes this sport.

“And now we go home … world champions.”