TOKYO (May 31, 2024) — WBC bantamweight world champion, three-weight king, and rising pound-for-pound superstar Junto Nakatani will defend his strap against Filipino contender Vincent Astrolabio on Saturday, July 20, at Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo.

Nakatani-Astrolabio tops a world title tripleheader that also includes WBO junior bantamweight world champion Kosei Tanaka against Jonathan “Titan” Rodriguez and the vacant WBO flyweight world title showdown between Riku Kano and Los Angeles native Anthony Olascuaga.

Additionally, the card features former kickboxing world champion Tenshin Nasukawa, who will take on Jonathan “Torres” Rodriguez in a 10-round bantamweight special feature.

The three world title fights and Nasukawa-Rodriguez will stream live and exclusively on ESPN+ in the early morning hours in the U.S. 

Junto Nakatani vs. Vincent Astrolabio

Nakatani (27-0, 20 KOs) is a former flyweight and junior bantamweight world champion who is 6-0 with five knockouts in title fights. He won the vacant WBO junior bantamweight crown in May 2023 with a brutal 12^th-round knockout over Andrew Moloney in Las Vegas. Less than four months later, he defended the belt with a one-sided decision over Argi Cortes. He moved up three pounds in February and dethroned WBC bantamweight world champion Alexandro Santiago via sixth-round TKO. Astrolabio (19-4, 14 KOs) is making his second bid for a world title following a May 2023 majority decision defeat to Jason Moloney for the vacant WBO bantamweight strap. 

Kosei Tanaka vs. Jonathan “Titan” Rodriguez

Tanaka (20-1, 11 KOs), who has held world titles in every weight class from 105 to 115 pounds, became Japan’s third-ever four-division world champion when he won a unanimous decision over Christian Bacasegua for the WBO junior bantamweight title in February. Tanaka has won five fights since the lone loss on his ledger, an eighth-round TKO to fellow Japanese four-division king Kazuto Ioka. Rodriguez (25-2-1, 17 KOs), from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, is 3-0-1 since falling short to Jerwin Ancajas in an April 2021 bid for the IBF junior bantamweight crown.

Riku Kano vs. Anthony Olascuaga

Kano (22-4-2, 11 KOs) is unbeaten in five fights since moving up to flyweight in 2022. He went 3-0 in 2023, including a second-round stoppage over then-unbeaten Khomsan Kaewruean. The 26-year-old is making his second attempt at a world title, as he lost a technical decision to Katsunari Takayama in 2016 for the WBO minimumweight title. Olascuaga (6-1, 4 KOs) is a former amateur standout who challenged Kenshiro Teraji for the unified light flyweight title in April 2023. He rebounded from that brutal setback — a ninth-round TKO — with a seventh-round stoppage over Giemel Magramo five months later.

Tenshin Nasukawa vs. Jonathan “Torres” Rodriguez

Nasukawa (3-0, 1 KO) made his pro boxing debut in 2023 following a decorated 44-0 kickboxing record that included multiple word titles. One of Japan’s most famous athletes, he is already world-ranked at bantamweight. Nasukawa made his 2024 debut in January with a third-round TKO over Luis Robles Pacheco. Rodriguez (17-2-1, 7 KOs), from Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, is best known for his 2023 first-round knockout of former world champion Kal Yafai. He is coming off February’s seesaw battle against Antonio Vargas, which he lost by seventh-round TKO.

By Bart Barry-

New Year’s Eve, Japan Standard Time, Japanese super flyweight Kazuto Ioka defended his title by eight-round stoppage over undefeated Japanese super flyweight Kosei Tanaka in a fight televised by YouTube hours after it finished, or some other way more-committed viewers discovered in realtime.  It was an excellent match and a wonderful showing by Ioka.

There’s something prickly insular about aficionados who fixate on lower weightclasses, but that doesn’t make them wrong.  If heavyweight-only casuals are boxing’s beer-drunk frat boys, flyweight fixators ain’t the kids who got picked first for kickball.  They like knowing things most fans don’t, they’re often smug, they correct your pronunciation, and for being so esoteric they must watch their heroes at times so symmetrically middle-of-the-night they can’t decide whether to awake or remain awake.  This last halfdecade, though, they’ve been rewarded more often than their cool peers.

This habit continued New Year’s Eve in Japan and sometime between Wednesday and Sunday in the U.S.  Truthfully the best super flyweight prizefighters currently in practice are Western Hemisphereans, but enough superb 115-pound fighting happens in Asia to be disproportionate.  One of the world’s three best fighters at any weight – quite probably the world’s single best fighter if not most accomplished – is a 118-pound guy from Japan.

Unlike others who travel to these shores for larger paychecks Asian fighters bring their power and honor with them.  Many years ago, when Golden Boy Promotions was believed an innovator of sorts, there was an event called World Cup of Boxing that pitted Mexico against Thailand in a casino outside Tucson, Ariz.  Mexico won all but one of the many title fights, as I recall, but the Thai fighters acquitted themselves with such professionalism and toughness, the wholly Mexican crowd applauded them often and loudly.  These were the previous generation of guys who survived a culture that made Srisaket Sor Rungvisai possible.

Sor Rungvisai deserves mention because of his place in the 112-pound ratings and what he accomplished as a virtual unknown in a 2017 match with the world’s best prizefighter at the time, and because his position in the ratings, second, between Gallo Estrada and the aforementioned Chocolatito Gonzalez, lends a bit of sobriety to this treatment of Ioka’s accomplishment.

Ioka hasn’t been in a hurry to match himself against any of the guys atop his division, even while defending the WBO’s title a few times.  His name doesn’t come up much.  That’s unfortunate because what he showed against Tanaka was proper compelling.

Whatever the scale said about it, Tanaka appeared the larger man in frame and physicality, Ioka an old, soft guy with high blood pressure.  Were it not for his composure Ioka might’ve looked overmatched from the opening bell.  This is where the difference between super flyweights and super heavyweights, and the divisions’ diverse super fans, pops up.

You don’t have to know very much at all about boxing to know in 30 seconds who’s going to win most heavyweight fights.  The size disparities are often gross, the skill disparities nearly so, and the 1-2s unfurl slowly enough for even the dullest of viewers to ascertain what’s happening.  Things are quite different at lower weightclasses.  The size disparity is usually negligible, and to get on any stage grander than TikTok you must be exceptional.

Back to Ioka’s composure.  Tanaka looked to be moving Ioka with a number of his punches early.  But Ioka undid the larger man like the master Juan Manuel Marquez did to Juan Diaz in Houston and Michael Katsidis in Las Vegas.  Ioka bet on straighter punches.  He fought with a certain obliviousness of whatever Tanaka was doing.  Is he hitting me with straight punches?  No?  Then I’ll win.

There was some irony, then, in it being an Ioka left hook that ruined Tanaka’s night.  Tanaka went down hard and never got back to the aggressiveness he needed if he were to unsettle Ioka – which he weren’t.  If Ioka wasn’t quite the finisher Marquez was it’s because nobody is.  Ioka did just fine.  

If the stoppage were a touch early, especially by American standards, let it be.  I don’t know enough about Japanese fight culture to do more than suspect this, but here it is: The stewardship referee Michiaki Someya took of Kosei Tanaka’s wellbeing is a major reason Japanese fighters comport themselves bravely as they do.  The referee, like any good regulator, is a braking mechanism, and until you install brakes on a racecar you daren’t shift it out first gear.  Too, there’s a homogeneity to Japanese culture, very different from America’s, that allowed all three men in the Ota-City General Gymnasium to see themselves as part of the same ecosystem and behave accordingly.  Both fighters were free to exert hard as possible, knowing their contest would be well and honorably regulated.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry