ALA Boxing Gym’s Rocky “Road Warrior” Fuentes will spend his New Year’s eve in hostile territory as he is set to square off against Japanese Shohei Omori in Kyoto, Japan.
The 30-year-old Fuentes last fought in April at the Cebu City Sports Center, where he faced fellow Filipino Romnick Magos.
Fuentes, who sports a record of 35-8-2 (win-loss-draw) with 20 knockout victories, won over Magos by majority decision and has not fought after that.
He has been training at the ALA Boxing Gym in Cebu City for months after he was initially offered a fight last Dec. 10 in North Carolina, USA for a Universal Boxing Federation (UBF) title. But his promoters from the ALA Promotions International decided to withdraw from the fight because of Visa problems, according to one of Fuentes’ trainer Edito Villamor.
“He had a problem with his Visa because our counterpart in the US mailed it to us very late, but we are very fortunate because there’s an offer to fight in Japan that we received right after we got the bad news and Rocky’s been training for [this] fight,” Villamor said.
The former world title challenger won six of his seven bouts in Japan and won the OPBF flyweight belt in the process.
Omori is seven years younger than Fuentes and has a record of 17 wins with 12 knockouts and a single defeat. He is also the reigning Japanese bantamweight champion.