Ishida moved up in weight division to knock out the previously undefeated James Kirkland whose record was 27–0 (24 KOs), flooring him three times in one minute and fifty-two seconds of the first round in an eight-round middleweight bout on the HBO pay-per-view televised undercard of Erik Morales vs. Marcos Maidana at the MGM Grand Las Vegas on April 9, 2011, in less than a month after the Tōhoku earthquake. Nori Takatani (who was the manager of Genaro Hernández, Oscar Albarado and others), Rudy Hernández, Daisuke Okabe and Hidenobu Honda from Green-Tsuda (who was the Japanese champion and two-time world title challenger) were in Ishida's corner. The fight was released just about two weeks before the fight. During the short preparation time, Ishida trained in Las Vegas and California, including sparring with big boxers such as Peter Quillin. Prior to the fight, Ishida's team decided to never throw roundhouse punches, and was careful with where on the ring he should be. The announcer Jim Lampley said that it was a bigger upset than Buster Douglas beating Mike Tyson in 1990. It was voted as the Upset of the Year in "The Ring"'s 83rd Annual "Ring" Awards and SI.com's 2011 Boxing Awards. In addition, in the RingTV.com's year-end polls for 2011, it attracted 22.6 percent of the vote for the Upset of the Year (ranking third), and 9.2 percent of the vote for the KO of the Year (ranking second by a large margin). Ishida was not happy with the status of the former interim champion, and was still not satisfied with knocking out Kirkland on such a big stage.