Flyweight sensation Galal Yafai not only gave us a sensational performance last night, completely dominating former IBF champ Sunny Edwards for a sixth-round stoppage win in his hometown of Birmingham to become the WBC interim champ, but the 31-year-old southpaw also arrived smack bang on the world stage in superb fashion. And now, as his promoter Eddie Hearn has said, the sky is the limit.
(Credit: Dave Thompson/Matchroom Boxing)
Yafai, who showed so much skill, aggression, relentlessness, and punch variety as he took Edwards apart round by round, can now look ahead to some huge fights. The obvious next move, as Hearn said at last night’s post-fight presser, is to fight full WBC flyweight champ Kenshiro Teraji. Yafai, 9-0(7), said last night that it would be good to go back to Japan to fight Teraji, the country where Yafai won his Olympic gold medal.
This one would be a potential classic. “Amazing Boy” Teraji, is a two-weight world champion, and the 32-year-old has been engaged in world title fights since back in 2017. Currently 24-1(15), Teraji won the WBC flyweight belt in October when he stopped Cristofer Rosales in the 11th round of a good action fight. Teraji has boxed an astonishing 16 world title fights, his sole loss coming against Masamichi Yabuki, this down at light-fly, the 10th round TKO defeat being avenged a few months later, with Teraji scoring a third-round stoppage.
It would be great to see Teraji and Yafai compete in either Japan or the UK. Hearn agrees, but he has other exciting ideas for Yafai as well.
“Obviously the natural move, the natural progression, is to go from interim world champion [to full world champion] and I’m sure it will be ordered,” Hearn said on a Teraji-Yafai fight. “A lot of options though. We know that Japan is a huge market for the lighter weight classes…..whoever we can try and bring here is always the first priority, we’ve got great momentum now in Birmingham. He’s gonna be around for a long, long time. Three or four rounds in [last night] I was thinking to myself, ‘my God, Galal against Bam in a couple of years is gonna be absolutely breathtaking.’ Do we bring a legend here? Do we bring Chocolatito [Martinez] here? Do we bring [Carlos] Cuadras or whoever, a big, big name? I don’t really wanna see him tread water.”
Hearn closed by saying he feels Yafai will show us his best stuff only when he fears the guy in the other corner. From here on in, it promises to be big and significant fights only for Yafai.
Yafai would be awesome against either of the four names Hearn listed – Teraji, Bam, Gonzalez, Cuadras. We may have to wait, though, for a Bam-Yafai clash. In the meantime, can Yafai unify the flyweight titles?
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