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Daniel Roman pummels Kubo, stops him in nine

Photo credit: Carlos Baeza/Thompson Boxing Promotions
Fighters Network
03
Sep

Daniel Roman marched forward and systematically dismantled Shin Kubo over nine rounds to win the “regular” WBA junior featherweight title Sunday at Shimazu Arena in Kyoto, Japan. The fight was waved off at the 1:21 mark as Kubo stumbled across the ring from a right hand brought on by Roman’s unrelenting pressure.

Roman (23-2-1, 9 knockouts) of Garden Grove, California, spent the first two rounds looking for ways inside the long reach of Kyoto’s Kubo (12-1, 9 KOs). Roman found the battle terrain he had hoped for in the third round as his head movement got him inside Kubo’s combinations, where he was able to bang away to the body.

“The first rounds I was trying to figure out the distance,” Roman said in a Facebook Live video afterwards.

The increasingly uncomfortable Kubo began taking heavy shots in the fifth round as Roman alternated between firing right uppercuts and right crosses through Kubo’s guard.



By the sixth, virtually all of Roman’s heavier blows were landing while Kubo’s pushing right jabs and left crosses had little effect on Roman. A right uppercut in that round hurt Kubo significantly for the first time, and a follow-up assault sent him into the ropes before the bell prevented a knockdown. The minute-long respite was not enough to help Kubo rebound, and a left uppercut and right hand in the first 10 seconds of the seventh swiveled his head to renew his crisis.

Two left hooks to the body followed by a wide-swinging right sent Kubo to the canvas moments later. With his left eye badly swollen, Kubo rose up but the punishment rapidly became more dire.

Near the end of the eighth round, a broken-down Kubo stumbled into the ropes, squared up and absorbed a right to the body before a whale of a right put him down for the second time.

The win puts the 27-year-old Roman smack dab in the middle of a convoluted situation with the WBA at 122 pounds. Guillermo Rigondeaux, the acknowledged WBA champion, has unresolved business with interim champion Moises Flores, whom Rigondeaux knocked out after the bell to end the first round in June, resulting in the fight becoming a no-contest.

Kubo had been rated No. 9 by THE RING heading into the fight.

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