By REYNALD MAGALLON
Johann Chua led five other Filipino cue artists surviving through the round of 32 of the All Japan Championship 2025 in Osaka.
The pride of Bacolod has been nothing short of dominant through the first three rounds of the competitions, stamping his class with convincing wins over three hometown bets.
The 33-year-old two-time All Japan winner dominated Hayato Abe, 8-3, in the first round before taking down Hideki Yamakawa, 8-5. Chua then made easy work of another Japanese rival Kenshiro Sakai, 10-1, to forge the Last 32 match against Tomoya Iima also of Japan.
A two-time world champion, Chua is emerging as one of the favorites in the tournament that offers the lion’s share of the $56,500 prize pool or roughly around P3.3 million.
Aside from Chua, other Filipinos still vying for the crown are Warren Kiamco, Kyle Amoroto, Antonio Lining and Rommel Santos.
Like Chua, Amoroto had an easy route to the Last 32 after defeating Japanese cue artists Yoshihiro Morino (8-2), Mistutaka Sugabe (8-3) and Tadaomi Kimoto (10-7) while Kiamco bucked a second round loss to Tadasu Sugihara (3-8) with an 8-4 win over Keita Kominato in the losers’ bracket before beating Taiwanese Wu Kun-Lin (10-8).
Lining, on the other hand, defeated Kouhei Inoue and Youhei Kouhara in the first two rounds before shrugging off Yukio Akagariyama, 10-8 in the round of 32 while Santos took down Julian Reigler from Latvia and then blanked Tomohiko Futamata in his first two matches before scoring a 10-4 win over Masato Yoshioka of Japan.
