Kazuto Ioka willing to give up his world title to conclude unfinished business with his new year’s eve rival, Joshua Franco.
As first reported by Jake Donovan of BoxingScene.com Ioka is moving forward with a rematch against Joshua Franco.
The two did battle in super flyweight unification bout that saw the WBA champion, Franco, facing the WBO champion, Ioka, with the outcome being the most unsatisfying of all in boxing - a draw.
Ioka is going to relinquish his WBO title as a mandated title defense against Junto Nakatani has been ordered, yet he is pursuing a rematch against Franco.
The rematch which was first reported by Yahoo! Japan, being looked at for a June fight date with no venue in Japan picked out as of now.
It appears that Ioka wants to settle the score before moving forward with his career as Ioka would’ve been making his fifth mandatory title defense since winning the belt in June of 2019, and becoming one of the most active world champions.
The talks between Ioka and Nakatani never seemed to get going and Franco, who has had two trilogies in his career already, seemed likely as the first bout was a good one, despite no distribution for fan’s outside of Japan.
Script.
In the words of MMA legend, Don Fyre, ‘let’s do it again, brother,’ as Joshua Franco and Kazuto Ioka appear to be headed towards a rematch of their 2022 New Year’s Eve classic.
As first reported by Yahoo! Japan with further reports from Jake Donovan of BoxingScene.com, the fight appears to be set to land in June at an unspecified venue in Japan.
Ioka will give up his WBO junior bantamweight world title as they mandated he fight Junto Nakatani next. If this fight does happen, his title will be stripped from him.
Franco who has now been in two trilogies in his short career, one against Oscar Negrete, and another against Andrew Moloney, will look to make a definite conclusion to avoid his third trilogy of his career.
The fight would be for Franco’s WBA junior bantamweight title.