Both newly crowned World Boxing Council light flyweight champion Masamichi Yabuki of Midori Boxing Gym and former champion Kenshiro Teraji of BMB Boxing Gym expressed their respective confidence in their March 19 title fight in Kyoto as they held a customary signing ceremony and a press conference at the BMB gym in Kyoto prefecture’s Uji on March 17.

The 29-year-old Yabuki will defend the title against Teraji, 30, as the WBC issued an order for their rematch after monitoring the video on their fight on Sept. 22 last year in the western Japanese city.

Teraji bled profusely from the above his right eyelid in the ninth round due apparently to Yabuki’s head butt. Teraji was stopped in the 10th round and failed in his ninth defense of the title he won in May 2017.

While Yabuki simply said, ‘’All I have to do is to win the fight convincingly, Teraji, popularly known as Kenshiro, replied, ‘’I am determined to get back both the title and confidence in myself.’’

Yabuki countered by saying, ‘’I am excited because I can fight the best Kenshiro. I don’t care about the oft-expressed matter of the head-butting. What I have to do is to fight aggressively.’’

For his part, Teraji, currently ranked first in the division, said, ‘’I want to win decisively by abiding by my style of boxing throughout.’’

In their first fight, two of the three judges scored the fight 40-36 for Yabuki, and the remaining judge had it even at 38-38 after the first four rounds of the scheduled 12-rounder in accordance with the open scoring system, which is said to have confused Teraji’s style of boxing in the ensuing rounds.

About this matter, Teraji simply said, ‘’I will land my right-hand punches more in addition to my left jabs.’’

Yabuki attended the day’s ceremony by wearing a T-shirt with the picture of ‘’Thouzer,’’ who is the arch-nemesis and mid-boss fighting against a warrior named Kenshiro (the protagonist of the popular Japanese manga series ‘’Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star).’’

Yabuki chanted Thouzer’s oft-used phrase ‘’Never make way, never grovel, never look back!”
Please write what I said, Yabuki asked reporters attending the ceremony.

Their fight in last September was so intensified and was selected as the best bout of 2021 by boxing writers and other experts.

The title fight will be held at Kyoto City Gymnasium, the same place in the previous fight. Yabuki has a record of 13 wins, including 12 KOs, against three defeats. For his part, Teraji has an 18-1 win-loss tally with 10 KOs. The fight will be shown via AbemaTV, a Japanese live TV streaming website.