1.
GV Fight in progress with Yoko Gushiken of japan (in long white socks) exchanging blows with Panamanian Alfonso Lopez.
0.26

2.
GV Crowd watching.
0.27

3.
GV START OF SEVENTH Fighters appear evenly matched.
0.50

4.
GV Crowd watching and encouraging fighters.
0.51

5.
GV Lopez scores good punch but fighting appears even again until Gushiken makes ???ntact with strong right and Lopez in knocked down.
1.30

6.
GV Referee separates fighters and counts to ten amid roaring from crowds. Gushiken runs back to corner where he is declared winner and people move into ring.
1.55

7.
LV Police keeping crowd from ring.
1.58

8.
GV Winner Gushiken carried shoulder high through crowd.
2.00



Initials JS/


SPORT: BOXING

Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Japanese World Boxing Association Junior Flyweight Champion Yoko Gushiken knocked out his Panamanian challenger Alfonso Lopez with a hard right hook to the jaw on Sunday (8 April). The fight, in Tokyo's Kuramae Kokugikan Sumo Arena, was scheduled for fifteen rounds, but Gushiken' knock-out punch was delivered towards the end of the seventh round.

SYNOPSIS: The fight was evenly matched in the first five rounds. Referee Ken Morita and Japanese judge Akiyoshi Sasaki scored the bout even fifty-nine to fifty-nine, up to the sixth round. Another Japanese judge, Shoji Nakamori, had it fifty-nine to fifty-eight in favour of Gushiken.

The fifteen-thousand spectators were still divided over the outcome of the fight at the start of the seventh round. They had seen Lopez make a cautious start, but also land good counter-attacks. At first Gushiken was unable to cope with Lopez's body weaving, ut then the champion began to vain heavy body blows on the challenger.

Gushiken first knocked Lopez down in the sixth round, but in that round he also suffered a bad cut over his right eye due apparently to butting. The injury appeared to spur him on.

Then the champion unleashed a combination of left and right hooks -- he found the opening to deal his hard right to Lopez's jaw, and the Panamanian went down.

It was Lopez's sixth defeat of his professional career. He has won twenty-seven fights, including sixteen knock-outs. For his fight with Gushiken, he weighed in at a hundred and eight pounds (48.9 kg) the limit of the junior flyweight division, and the same as Gushiken. The champion remains unbeaten, with eighteen fight and thirteen knock-outs to his credit.