Kazuto Ioka will continue his annual year-end boxing tradition, even If not versus the desired level of opposition.
The four-division and reigning WBA junior bantamweight titlist will next defend his belt versus Venezuela’s Josber Perez atop a December 31 show at Ota-City General Gymnasium in Tokyo. The fight was formally announced during a press conference Monday afternoon local time on Abema TV, which will carry the final boxing show of 2023.
Ioka will top his twelfth New Year’s Eve boxing event, a tradition which dates back to 2011 during his first year as a major titlist. The 34-year-old Osaka native—who now lives in Tokyo and trains under the guidance of Las Vegas-based Ismael Salas—is 9-1-1 on the date, the draw which came in his attempted WBO/WBA unification bout versus Joshua Franco one year ago.
Their June 24 rematch saw Ioka (30-2-1, 15KOs) soundly outpoint an overweight Franco, who lost his title at the scales and the fight in the ring and went on to retire. Ioka claimed the WBA belt with the win, though it came at the expense of his being stripped of the WBO junior bantamweight title for failure to face mandatory challenger and countryman Junto Nakatani.
Ioka is 7-1-1 in major title fights at junior bantamweight, and 16-2-1 (7KOs) in bouts with a primary title at stake spanning four weight divisions.
The hope for this date was to once again unify. As BoxingScene.com previously reported, Ioka was in talks with lineal and WBC champion Juan Francisco Estrada. Things appeared to move along well before they suddenly hit a wall and quickly collapsed.
Ioka immediately went on the hunt to land a similarly desirable opponent but simply had to settle for an available ranked contender.
Perez (20-3, 18KOs) will enter his second career title fight. He came up short in a February 2020 bid versus unbeaten WBA flyweight titlist Artem Dalakian on the road in Kiev, Ukraine. Three straight wins have followed for the 28-year-old fringe contender, though versus subpar opposition and while he remains in search of his first win on the road.
In his lone other fight outside of Venezuela, Perez dropped a July 2019 ten-round decision to Rober Barrera in Barranquilla, Colombia.
Ioka first began the New Year’s Eve tradition in his original Osaka hometown. He made the second defense of his WBC strawweight title in a December 2011 first-round knockout of Thailand’s Yodgoen Tor Chalermcha. One fight later, he outlasted countryman Akira Yaegashi in their June 2012 shootout, which marked the first-ever unified title fight between reigning titleholders from Japan.
The first five year-end main events for Ioka took place in Osaka before he headlined a 2016 show in Kyoto. The only year the tradition was broken was 2017, when Ioka abruptly retired from the sport.
His ring return in 2018 restored the tradition, though it took place in Macao and featured his only defeat on the festive holiday when he dropped a split decision to The Philippines’ Donnie Nietes in their vacant WBO junior bantamweight title fight.
The setback was avenged in a twelve-round, unanimous decision for Ioka last July at Ota-City, where he will fight for the eighth consecutive time. The win was his sixth in a row, dating back to a tenth-round knockout of Aston Palicte in June 2019 to win the WBO 115-pound title. With the feat, Ioka became Japan’s first-ever male boxer to win titles in four weight divisions.
He was joined by Naoya Inoue, who matched the feat with a brutally one-sided, eighth-round knockout of unbeaten Stephen Fulton on July 25 to claim the WBC/WBO junior featherweight crown. The unbeaten pound-for-pound entrant will attempt to become Japan’s first-ever two-division undisputed champion when he faces WBA/IBF titlist Marlon Tapales on December 26 at Ariake Arena in Tokyo.
Ioka’s 20th career primary title fight is not quite as significant. However, confirmation of his New Year’s Eve tradition being kept alive gives the Japanese boxing scene a potent one-two punch just five days apart to close out the year.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox