### INDUCTION SPEECH

## "BOXING MADE ME"

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am deeply honored to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Boxing has been my life for more than fifty years.

I was born in Kobe City, Japan, in 1947, and started watching boxing at the age of ten. My motherfs uncle was a sponsor to Kobe Boxing Club, so I was playing in the gym since my boyhood. The world champions at that time were as follows: heavyweight, Floyd Patterson; light heavyweight, Archie Moore; middleweight, Carmen Basilio; welterweight, Virgil Akins; lightweight, Joe Brown; featherweight, Hogan Kid Bassey; bantamweight, Alphonse Halimi; and flyweight, Pascual Perez. Thatfs all. There were no junior classes, nor multiple world champions in each weight division like today.

I went gboxing crazy,h and devoured boxing books and magazines. My father said, gIf you read so many boxing books, you will become a fool.h Well, he was right. I became a real gboxing fool,h and went to live in boxing. I sometimes ask myself why I love boxing so much. I guess that boxing touches something deep inside me.

When I was seventeen, I was a faithful reader of The Ring Magazine and I wrote a letter to the editor, Mr. Nat Fleischer, pointing out some mistakes in the reports about Japan. I thought gMr. Boxingh Fleischer would ignore such a letter from Japan. To my great surprise, he kindly sent me a reply and suggested I would become his new Japanese correspondent.

I was just a high school student with limited ability in writing English. Mr. Fleischer became my mentor, as he sent back my first report with corrections to my English. He gave me instructions on the proper way to write a good boxing report. At the age of 17, I started my boxing career as a reporter as well as a cornerman.

I began to make my own English boxing dictionary, collecting words like gknockdown,h gknockout,h gdraw,h and gbum,h among so many others. I have been still improving my boxing dictionary for forty-four years. For example, some American boxing magazine called me gjack-of-all-trades.h By consulting a dictionary, I realized it means a person who does everything. It is correct. I am not only a reporter, but also a trainer/cutman/manager/promoter/TV commentator/novelist and driver of my wife.

When I started writing for The Ring Magazine, my report was very small. But my reports became more extensive, getting bigger and bigger space. Yoshio Shirai became the first Japanese world champion in 1952, when I was just five years old. We have had 57 world champions out of Japan since then, and it has been my privilege to send reports on each and every world champion born in Japan since the second champ Fighting Harada.

Some fifteen years ago, I told The Ring it need not pay me any longer. Since that time, my reports have been available?for free?to every boxing publication all over the world. It is my great pleasure that my reports become public property so that our activities in Japan or in Asia become more known to the world, although I put my first priority to the website FIGHTNEWS.

I have been a TV boxing commentator for thirty years, now for WOWOW, a cable television like HBO which shows two or three world title bouts every Monday evenings. Japanese fight fans can regularly watch Oscar de la Hoya, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Miguel Cotto, and other greats.

As I explained my career as reporter, I would like to mention other sides of mine. When I was a high school student and crazy boxing fan, I was trying to learn by heart the names of all previous world champions in all classes. Then, I was eager to see them fight on classic films. After graduating from Kobe University, I entered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to be mechanical engineer. After working, I went to the gym to coach young boxers. I had a brief training experience in the teens. As I could earn my salary by working as engineer, I started collecting boxing films, which, at that time, were of 8 mm films from Ring Classics.

It was from 1971, when I was 24. I was so much moved by many classic films of Jack Dempsey, Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Willie Pep, Sandy Saddler, etc., that I started importing the films and distributing them in Japan. I now have more than 30,000 bouts in my collection. I then became a Japanese agent of Ring Classics, the president of which was Mr. Martin Decatur, who was a handball pupil of the late Jim Jacobs. The Ring Classics was a subsidiary of The Big Fights presided by Messrs. Bill Cayton and Jim Jacobs. To make a long story short, I became Bill Cayton/Mike Tysonfs Japanese agent to materialize Iron Mikefs first coming to Japan before 55,000 fans at the Tokyo Dome in 1988. I was the coordinator of the historic world heavyweight title bout with Mr. Akihiko Honda as the promoter.

As international matchmaker, I cover some 150 international bouts every year in Japan. International bouts mean ones between Japanese and foreign boxers. In 2006, I coordinated 209 bouts in one year, which was my record. Maybe you cannot believe that there are more than 250 bouts in a year, 365 days, in such a small country as Japan. It means there are some five shows a week regularly. I have served as matchmaker/coordinator of some 2,000 bouts including about 150 world title bouts.

Next as a trainer or cutman, I was fortunate to handle four world champions: WBC lightfly Shigeo Nakajima, WBC superfly Jiro Watanabe, WBC feather Luisito Espinosa and WBA minimum Joma Gamboa. For twenty years since at the age of 18, I had been a trainer working the corner and stopping blood as cutman. Even now I work the corner of my boxer Randy Suico, WBA and WBC #6 lightweight contender who failed to win the world title from Juan Diaz in Las Vegas two years ago. I accompanied some Asian challengers against Michael Carbajal or Ricardo Lopez to the States.

Society has changed since I became a boxing fan in 1957. Our modern society has made everything more convenient. Boxing also has changed less rough and less tough. In 1958, Yvon Durelle knocked down defending world light heavyweight champion Archie Moore three times in the first round and floored him again in the fifth. Moore bounced back to knock out Durelle in the eleventh round and retained his title. That was drama. Today, that fight would have been stopped in the first round. Wefve lost that kind of drama, and it seems to some people that the fight game might be less interesting as a result.

However, today, we have to respect safety over drama or thrill. We should accept it. Boxing must continue to change with the times to survive in the modern world. I believe boxers of today are faster, better trained, and more skilled than those of the past. I can say that as a historian and a film collector. This continued evolution in boxing technique, coupled with improvements in ring safety, will keep boxing alive forever.

Following the great world champion Mr. Fighting Harada who was inducted twelve years ago, I am the second inductee out of Japan in the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the first Japanese in the non-participant category. I really appreciate your induction on behalf of the late Mr. Nat Fleischer, Mr. Bill Cayton, Mr. Jim Jacobs, my wife, my family, my boxing friends all over the world, and, of course, the sport I love. Thank you for your listening to my speech.

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