Hozumi Hasegawa

Background

Hozumi Hasegawa is a former professional boxer from Japan who competed between 1999 to 2016. He is notably the first Japanese boxer to win world titles in three weight classes, having held the W.B.C. bantamweight title from 2005 to 2010, the W.B.C. featherweight title from 2010 to 2011, and the W.B.C. super-bantamweight title in 2016. He is the first Japanese boxer to have defended a bantamweight world title four times. Hasegawa also received the Most Valuable Player awards in 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009 from the Japan Boxing Commission for defending his title.

Hasegawa took up boxing because of his father. He first started in the second grade but stopped to concentrate on his studies but returned when he was 17. He went professional in 1999, losing in two of his first five outings. However, Hasegawa would go on to win his next eight bouts. This led to a match between Hasegawa and the experienced Jess Maca, but after a hard fight, Hasegawa prevailed by a close split decision. Hasegawa rose to the occasion, out-boxing the defending champion to earn his first world title by unanimous decision, ending Sahaprom’s six-year-long defense of his W.B.C. bantamweight title. One defense followed before he met Sahaprom in a rematch, Hasegawa had grown as a fighter, dispatching the Thai legend in nine rounds. In April 2010, Hasegawa met W.B.O. ruler Fernando Montiel. The defending W.B.C. belt holder took an early lead until he got caught by Montiel in the final seconds of the fourth round and was stopped. He considered retiring but decided to move to the featherweight division where he took on Juan Carlos Burgos for the vacant title.

At featherweight, Hasegawa didn’t become the force he was at bantamweight and dropped the title in his first defense against heavy-handed Jhonny Gonzalez. After four rebound wins he challenged reigning super-bantamweight champion, Kiko Martinez.