September 18th hasn't been an historically great day in Asian boxing, for whatever reason, but we have still had plenty of fights fall on this day with varying levels of importance.
On this day in 1963 we saw a surprising change of title as Thailand's Pone Kingpetch, Thailand's first ever world champion, was stopped inside a round by Japan's Hiroyuki Ebihara, who claimed the unified, WBA/WBC, Flyweight title. Kingpetch went into the fight having previously beaten the great Fighting Harada with a majority decision in Thailand and nobody had expected Ebihara to blast him away like this. Unfortunately for the Japanese fighter his reign was short lived and he lost his titles in a rematch with Kingpetch just 4 months later.
It was on this day in 1982 that South Korean great Jung Koo Chang suffered his first professional defeat. Chang, the "Korean Hawk", was narrowly out pointed by the great Hilario Zapata. The fight was Chang's first world title bout as attempted to claim the WBC Light Flyweight title from Zapata ad although Chang did come up short he would quickly avenge the loss, stopping Zapata 6 months later. From then on Chang became a true boxing legend setting a then record number of defenses in the division.
In 1999 Kazakhstan's great Vassiliy Jirov successfully defended his IBF Cruiserweight title with a 10th round victory over Dale Brown. This was the first defense from Jirov who would hold that title until meeting American legend James Toney in 2003 and losing a 12 round decision in what was essentially a thriller.
Sadly it was also on this date that we last saw Thailand's Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym in the ring. Poonsawat defeated Danilo Pena in what would be his final fight before it was discovered that he suffered from thalassemia and caused him to retire from the sport. Just prior to his retirement Poonsawat was set to fight Cuban sensation Guillermo Rigondeaux and it's a real shame we didn't get to see that bout as it would have been very interesting.