Shinji Takehara
Shinji Takehara was born in Hiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan on January 25th, 1972 and is the Japanese Boxer. At the age of 52, Shinji Takehara biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
At 52 years old, Shinji Takehara has this physical status:
Takehara got into numerous street fights during his teens. He briefly played baseball before joining the school judo team. Takehara did not move on to high school, after graduating middle school, he moved to Tokyo in 1988 to start a boxing career. He took numerous part-time jobs while training, including working as a cleaning man at Yokohama Arena, where he would later make his first (and only) title defense of the WBA Middleweight Title.
Professional career
Takehara made his debut on May 15, 1989, with a 4th-round KO victory. He went on to win the Japanese Middleweight Title in 1991, defending it three times. He won the vacant OPBF Middleweight Title in 1993, which he defended six times.
Takehara got a shot against WBA Middleweight Champion Jorge Castro, who had a record of 98-4-2 at the time and had made five title defenses. Takehara went into the fight as a huge underdog, and the match took place in the tiny Korakuen Hall despite being a world title bout. Regardless, Takehara knocked Castro down in the 3rd round, and won by unanimous decision in 12 rounds, becoming the first ever Japanese boxer to win a world middleweight title.
The win against Castro generated huge media hype, and Takehara's title defense took place in Yokohama Arena on June 24, 1996, against William Joppy. Though both fighters were undefeated, Takehara was once again the underdog, and Joppy announced that he would win easily by KO. The fight was a disaster for Takehara, who was knocked down in the 1st, and lost by TKO in the 9th when the referee stopped the fight, giving up the middleweight title in half a year. Takehara himself admitted that he would have been knocked out even if the referee did not stop the fight, and Joppy remarked that he could have knocked out Takehara much earlier if he had wanted.
While preparing for his next fight, Takehara was diagnosed with a detached retina. This forced him to retire from boxing at only 24 years of age. His record was 24-1-0 (18KOs).