Jezreel Corrales’ Tokyo Earthquake
On April 27, 2016, Jezreel Corrales floored Takashi Uchiyama three times and stopped him in the second round in Tokyo, ending the Japanese fighter’s long WBA super-featherweight reign. Corrales then defeated Uchiyama again by split decision in a December rematch.
Career Milestones and Fight Results
The victory was no one-night fluke. Corrales returned to Japan on New Year’s Eve for an immediate rematch. Uchiyama managed to knock the champion down in the fifth round, but Corrales recovered and kept working through the later rounds. The judges gave him a split decision after twelve, allowing him to leave Tokyo with the belt again and a second win over the former champion.
Corrales continued defending the title in 2017, including a difficult fight with Robinson Castellanos that ended in a technical decision after an accidental clash of heads in the tenth. His reign then came to an abrupt end before his next defense. At the weigh-in for a scheduled bout with Puerto Rico’s Alberto Machado, Corrales came in more than three pounds over the super-featherweight limit. The WBA stripped him of the championship, though the fight went ahead and Machado was the only boxer eligible to win the vacant belt (WBA weigh-in ruling).
Machado was dropped early, but recovered and stopped Corrales in the eighth round on October 21, 2017. Corrales therefore lost his title on the scales before the fight, then suffered a separate defeat in the ring. Keeping those events distinct matters: his championship reign did not end with the knockout, even though the bout made Machado the new titleholder.
Corrales’s story is defined by sharp turns. He crossed the Pacific and shocked a celebrated champion, proved the result in a rematch, and then saw the belt disappear at the scales before a hard-fought loss to Machado. Those nights made him one of Panama’s notable champions of the 2010s. The Uchiyama victories remain the centerpiece—a pair of performances that began with a stunning stoppage and ended with a composed decision in the same city.
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Jezreel Corrales, Boxing, Championship Fights, Boxing History
