Koki Kameda continues to make his presence felt as a promoter.
BoxingScene.com has confirmed that Kameda Promotions won the promotional rights to the Emmanuel Rodriguez-Ryosuke Nishida IBF bantamweight title fight. Kameda—a former three-division champ and now head of the promotional company bearing his name—bid $300,010 to outpace Fresh Productions Boxing ($250,000) during Tuesday’s purse bid hearing conducted via Zoom from IBF headquarters in Springfield, New Jersey.
Per the terms of the bid, Kameda was required to submit a ten-percent deposit of the winning total—$30,001. Another ten-percent is required along with signed agreements within five business days to validate the bid. The bout must take place no later than April 29, or 90 days from Tuesday’s result.
The session was ordered after Fresh Productions and Kameda—representing Rodriguez and Nishida, respectively—failed to reach terms during the ordered negotiation period.
Assuming that Rodriguez honors the terms of the purse bid, he will be entitled to 65-percent—$195,006.50—as the defending champ. Nishida is due the remaining 35-percent—$105,003.50—as the mandatory challenger.
Rodriguez (22-2, 13KOs; 1NC) will enter the first defense of his second title reign. The 31-year-old from Manati, Puerto Rico regained the belt in a twelve-round shutout of Miami’s Melvin Lopez in their vacant title fight last August 12 in Oxon Hill, Maryland. It marked his fourth appearance within five fights on a Premier Boxing Champions (PBC)-branded platform.
Interestingly, that ordered bout was claimed by TGB Promotions, the primary promoter for PBC events who posted a paltry offer of $25,000 as the lone bidder during a purse bid hearing last summer. It was going to cost far more to keep the bout on their side of the world and Rodriguez will now have to hit the road.
Kameda Promotions has rapidly emerged as a rising force on the Japanese boxing scene and has already come up big during several purse bid hearings during its early years. The company now has three title fights to make their way to the schedule, all eyed for early spring. The Shigeoka brothers—Yudai and Ginjiro—are both due to make strawweight title defenses, with a big announcement expected in the coming days.
Nishida (8-0, 1KO) is being fast-tracked to a major title.
The 27-year-old southpaw from Osaka was advanced to 12-round affairs in just his fourth pro bout. On that April 2021 night, he soundly outpointed former WBC flyweight titlist Daigo Higa via unanimous decision in what remains his most notable win to date.
It marked the first of five straight fights where he has gone ten or more rounds, all in decision victories. Nishida went the twelve-round distance in both of his 2023 appearances. The latter came in a twelve-round, unanimous decision over Mexico’s Cristian Medina (21-4, 14KOs) in his Osaka hometown to advance to the top of the IBF bantamweight rankings.
Rodriguez’s first IBF title reign began with a twelve-round shutout of England’s Paul Butler in May 2018, on the road in London. He lodged one successful defense—an October 2018 split decision over Australia’s Jason Moloney, who has since claimed the WBO title. That bout took place during the quarterfinal round of the World Boxing Super Series bantamweight tournament, from which he was eliminated one fight later in a second-round knockout to Naoya Inoue.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. X (formerly Twitter): @JakeNDaBox