By Joe Koizumi

Surprisingly, former four-organization 105-pound champion of the Katsunari Takayama (31-8-1NC) of Japan, 36, announced on Tuesday a return to professional again although he once retired from the paid ranks in 2017 in order to participate in the Tokyo Olympic Games but failed to win in the first contest of the tournaments to decide the Japanese Olympian and then announced to hang up gloves for good last August.

Ex-champ of the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO (in this order of his title acquisitions), the 5’2” veteran’s dream is big enough to aim at his second-class coronation at the 108-pound category against either WBA titleholder Hiroto Kyoguchi or WBC champ Kenshiro Teraji. “I have unfinished business as a professional.”

He is now a student in Nagoya Industrial University—that he entered at the age of 33–to hope to be a school teacher in the future. His ambition is insatiable.