It took less than three minutes for Isaac Dogboe to stake his claim as the best 122-pound boxer in the world.
In the opening round of Top Rank's live broadcast on ESPN from Arizona, Dogboe scored an opening round TKO win over Hidenori Otake, retaining his WBO super bantamweight title. This was Dogboe's second straight fight on ESPN, but this was his first world title defense.
Otake was ready to trade punches with Dogboe but it became apparent very early in the fight that Dogboe had a big advantage in power. Dogboe made Otake pay with a sensational left hook to knock him down almost midway through the first round. Once Otake got back up from the knockdown, Dogboe continued attacking him, knocking him down a second time before the referee stopped the fight for good.
The loss snapped Otake's nine-fight win streak, a streak that included an OPBF super bantamweight title reign. Otake, a former Japanese national champion, is now 0-2 in world title fights with his first such loss coming in 2014 when he lost a wide unanimous decision to then-WBA champion Scott Quigg.
Dogboe started the year with a TKO victory over Cesar Juarez in Ghana back in January to win the interim WBO title, setting up the fight against then-champion Jessie Magdaleno. Dogboe fought Magdaleno back in April in the main event of a Top Rank card in Philadelphia. In that fight, Dogboe bounced back from an early knockdown to stop Magdaleno in the 11th round of their fight to win the title.
