Chris John still hasn't lost a fight, and still has his WBA featherweight title, but the Indonesian superstar's fight with Satoshi Hosono ended in unsatisfactory fashion today in Jakarta, on a three-round technical draw due to a cut caused by a headbutt.
John (48-0-3, 22 KO) was the pretty heavy favorite, as Hosono (23-2-1, 17 KO) is a solid fighter, but also had lost to his previous two best opponents, Celestino Caballero and Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym. The likely outcome, it appeared on paper, was another fairly routine John victory over 12 rounds.
Instead, a headbutt opened a legitimately nasty little gash over John's right eye in the third round, and after two trips to the corner, the doctor and referee Rafael Ramos called the whole thing off. John's corner draped title belts over him as if he'd just knocked out Mikey Garcia.
Here's a shot of the cut, post-fight and cleaned up:
In the much more exciting co-feature, Indonesia's second-biggest boxing star, Daud Yordan, was upset by Simpiwe Vetyeka, losing the lightly-regarded IBO featherweight title. Yordan (30-3, 23 KO) had gone neck-and-neck with Vetyeka (25-2, 15 KO), a heavy underdog, until being stopped with 48 seconds remaining in the 12th and final round.
Vetyeka, 32, was definitely a hand-picked opponent, but sometimes those things just don't work out. As a bantamweight in 2007, Vetyeka gave Hozumi Hasegawa a pretty decent fight in Japan, when Hasegawa was in the middle of his excellent run at 118 pounds.