Brian Norman Jr retained his WBO welterweight world title by stopping Jin Sasaki with one explosive punch in Tokyo.<\/b><\/p>\n
The American dropped Sasaki twice in the first round and the one-way traffic continued once the challenger rose quickly to his feet.<\/p>\n
Sasaki, 23, tried to fight fire with fire in front of his home crowd, but that approach was punished in the fifth when Norman Jr landed a powerful left hook.<\/p>\n
The shot put Sasaki out cold and the Japanese fighter was worked on by medics for several minutes, before being taken out of the ring on a stretcher.<\/p>\n
It meant Norman Jr stood alone in the ring without his opponent as the official result was read out.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old extended his unbeaten record to 28-0, adding his 22nd knockout and his third stoppage in a row.<\/p>\n
The Georgia native is eager to add more world titles to his collection after a knockout of the year contender.<\/p>\n
Norman Jr did have his sights set on fighting IBF and WBA champion Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis, but his domestic rival confirmed this week he intended to move up in weight.<\/p>\n
“I wish I had a certain fight coming up,” he said afterwards.<\/p>\n
“But they heard B Norman the Storm was coming. Y’all know what happens when a storm’s coming, they grab their boots and run.<\/p>\n
“We shall see what’s next for me, hopefully October or November.”<\/p>\n
After the bout, Sasaki’s team announced the fighter had undergone a CT scan at hospital and there was no “bleeding” or “injuries or trauma”, but the fighter was suffering from memory loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brian Norman Jr retained his WBO welterweight world title by stopping Jin Sasaki with one explosive punch in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-197620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114711079440854022","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}