Ricardo Rafael Sandoval produced an upset to dethrone Kenshiro Teraji of his WBC and WBA flyweight world titles in Yokohama, Japan.<\/b><\/p>\n
Sandoval, 26, climbed off the canvas in the fifth round to go toe-to-toe with the two-weight world champion.<\/p>\n
A brilliant, closely contested fight was not quite reflected in the scorecards, which was a split decision for California native Sandoval – 115-112, 115-112 and 113-114.<\/p>\n
“I feel amazing. I never thought since I started at 10 years old we would be on this stage,” Sandoval said.<\/p>\n
Despite the scorecards there were no complaints from 33-year-old Teraji, who suffered just his second career defeat and his first since 2021.<\/p>\n
Teraji had been unified champion in two divisions, at light-flyweight and flyweight, and may now consider his future.<\/p>\n
His defeat ended a disappointing night for the gathered Japanese fans as they also saw Daigo Higa yet again come agonisingly close to becoming bantamweight world champion.<\/p>\n
And it was another American who broke their hearts, as Texan Antonio Vargas produced a last-gasp knockdown to help retain his WBA bantamweight world title via a unanimous draw.<\/p>\n
The travelling champion was floored in the fourth round by Higa but secured his own knockdown in the final round.<\/p>\n
It was enough to bring the scorecards level, 113-113, and ensure 28-year-old Vargas kept hold of his recently acquired world title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ricardo Rafael Sandoval produced an upset to dethrone Kenshiro Teraji of his WBC and WBA flyweight world titles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-304352","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\/114943147671363935","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304352","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=304352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}