Hozumi "Ace of Japan" Hasegawa

The newer generation fans may not have caught much if any of his campaign, or have a full appreciation for what he meant to his fans, but in his prime Hozumi was a joy to watch - and probably ranked as high as top 5 in my favorite active boxers list for close to a decade. No contemporary was as popular, except maybe Shinsuke Yamanaka or Toshiaki Nishioka - with only Naoya Inoue and Kazuto Ioka coming even close, among today's roster.

A second generation boxer, the fluid southpaw counter-puncher was groomed for the business early on by his father Daijirō (who apparently was a pro boxer himself, and fought thrice before a heart condition forced him to give it up...although I can't find any record of him on BoxRec). This made him a second-hand apprentice of Manzo Kikuchi, a national Japanese featherweight titlist in the 1960's and Daijirō's mentor.

It was a bumpy road early on, however. Failing his original "fight test" (a physical conditioning assessment, something like an exhibition match or hard spar, which is requisite of the Japanese boxing commission before they hand over a license to any novice with aspirations of debuting - and which I've long thought should be adopted by the rest of the world), he'd pass on his second try, and went on to lose his third & fifth pro bouts. Undaunted, he pecked his way up the ladder and within three years had claimed the Oriental & Pacific bantamweight championship and defended it thrice.

Until this point, Hasegawa, in his own words, had been aiming to simply outpoint his opponents as he didn't want to hurt or embarrass anyone (....). When he challenged Thai combat sports legend (3x Rajdamnern stadium champ in Muay Thai kickboxing, and 2-time 118lb king in Western pro boxing) Veeraphol Sahaprom for the coveted green belt, his record was just 17-2 (5). After becoming champion, he reflected that he owed a duty to his fans to set an example and put on exciting matches, so he began to focus conscientiously on securing the knockouts. To wit, in his first two defenses he kayoed both opponents, including Sahaprom in their rematch. He would score twice as many stoppages in the second half of his career as in the first, and become renowned for a hard-hitting, risk-taking style (which eventually saw him knocked out himself in his final three losses).

Just a year into his title reign, his mother was diagnosed with a colorectal tumor, so a large chunk of virtually every purse he collected as champ was divested into her radiation therapy (with each treatment costing 3 million yen, or about $30k in USD). She passed away just six months after he was KTFO by Fernando Montiel to end his lengthy WBC reign. A month later, an emotional Hasegawa dedicated his victory over Juan Carlos Burgos, in which he reclaimed his now-vacant belt, to his mother.

2012 would be another inspirational year. In the ring, Hasegawa would rebound from being savaged in 2011 by Jhonny González (yet another dynamite fisted Mexican, and Montiel's old rival) with a sensational comeback triumph over unbeaten Mexican puncher Felipe Carlos “El Príncipe” Félix, kicking off a four win streak that eventually led to a challenge of Kiko Martínez for the IBF super bantamweight title in 2014. Two months before stepping in with Félix, however, the Ace would perform an even more heroic feat when he dashed across the highway to rescue a motorcycle driver that had been struck by a car, and dragging him to safety on a median strip. The mayor of Kobe awarded him the "Flower Clock Award" for his Samaritan valor.

Here is his theme song "Fighting Man", written & performed by his friend Kiyokiba Shunsuke (who initially rose to fame as part of a J-pop boy-band and then became a successful rock-n-roll solo artist in his own right) - much as Volbeat wrote "A Warrior's Call" about Mikkel Kessler with use by him for ring walks in mind - which Hozumi used in the last few years of his career, from the Arturo Santos Reyes bout onwards:

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It really is a shame he never got around to making his US debut. It actually was set to happen, in an IBF and WBC unification match had Vic Darchinyan wrested the former belt from Joseph Agbeko...but alas, the Ghanaian bested the Armenian-Aussie. That fight with the Raging Bull would have been spectacular - and could have netted the Ace some magnificent paydays, along with a new legion of fans in the west, outside just internationally-savvy diehards.

A modern legend - not just of boxing in Japan, but of the sport. Period.

He now operates his own gym - in a way carrying on the legacy of Manzo Kikuchi (whose long-standing gym closed just a few years before Hozumi opened his) and regularly provides commentary on televised Japanese boxing shows. I look forward to seeing him guide young talents yearning to reach the same heights that he scaled, and provide a fraction as many thrills:

Hasegawa vs. Félix:

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Hasegawa vs. Reyes:

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Hasegawa vs. Sahaprom II:

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Highlights:

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Credit to asianboxing.info, btw, for the vids (and some trivia nuggets; the rest gleaned from his Japanese wiki page and some other deep-dive research).

 

And just what did Hozumi think of you?

(or didja mix up yer pronouns there laddie buck )

 

Ah...perhaps tis in UK slang. Over here if we omit the word "to" it changes the meaning implicitly by swapping the object & subject around. For what you meant we probably would say "rough showed me him".

...but this is a thread for nerding out about the second or third (behind Pac and maybe Wangek) most exciting Asian southpaw of this millennium - not about grammar or style. IB, go be a pedant on topics like that in the Lougs, you tit!

 

You'd probably be the one likeliest to remember (or @DemolitionDan, but he's long MIA) - was it Hasegawa that first inspired the Japanese commentators' mantra of "Budi-budi-budi!" when someone landed a solid body punch? The very earliest documentation of the phrase I can find mentioned on here is when Takahiro Aoh (incidentally, Hozumi's close friend and protégé) stopped Humberto Gutiérrez via body shot - as it happens, in the co-features to Hasegawa's loss to Jhonny G. I could have sworn it was originally coined in reference to HH, though... (and later popularized in the Kameda bros' matches)

 

KK is definitely more famous (sadly) than probably Hasegawa, Nishioka and Uchiyama combined - but if we're defining "popular" as well-liked then he doesn't come anywhere near any of them. He's famous in Japan the way Mayweather is here...outside a few tough guy Yakuza wannabes, I think people mostly tune in hoping to see him lose.

 

I really like that HH quit on his own terms, after putting together one more win streak in 2015-16 and claiming a world title in a historical (domestically precedent-setting) third weight division, then just walking away instead of hanging around too long and getting chinned by some unworthy (but prime, bigger, stronger) super bantam.

 

+ that was a come-from-behind stoppage of Ruiz, then still a very good fighter in his prime (a week away from his 30th birthday, whereas Hozumi was two months from his 36th). Cuatito had led on the official scorecards after 4 per WBC open scoring, and still led on Nicolas Hidalgo's after 9 when he quit.

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Yeah, at least with the Darchinyan superfight there's a tangible reason (known as King Kong ) to point to in explaining why it didn't come about. Why the Ace vs. Dragon match was never even in the works is a real puzzler.