On August 2, Japanese boxers Shigetoshi Kotari and Hiromasa Urakawa, both 28, fought on the same card at Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall and hoped to secure victories to bolster their respective careers. Kotari, a junior lightweight, was having his first ever 12-rounder, while Urakawa, a lightweight, was looking to rebound from a close decision loss and get back to winning ways in a fight scheduled for eight rounds.
At the time defeat would have been considered the worst-case scenario for both, as indeed it is for any professional boxer who wants to feel superhuman on fight night. However, that night in Tokyo, Kotari and Urakawa were to tragically lose more than just their fights. Days later, they were both pronounced dead following unsuccessful brain surgery.
This, while always tragic, is not an uncommon thing in boxing, nor does it shock anyone when it happens. Yet the nature of the tragedy of Kotari and Urakawa, and the idea that both fought for the last time on the same night, has brought the events of August 2 some extra attention and sounded an even louder alarm.
If one death can be ignored, it is much tougher turning a blind eye when there are two. For Japanese boxing, in particular, the events of August 2 have simultaneously cast a dark shadow on the sport and shone a spotlight on both its dangers and what it can and should be doing to make it safer.
Japan Boxing Commission Secretary-General Tsuyoshi Yasukochi, one of the men tasked with getting the response to this tragedy right, admits that the sport has been shaken to its core and that changes must now be made. He has even gone so far as to suggest that the future of the sport in Japan could be at stake should they get the response to August 2 wrong.
“If we don’t improve things, this sport won’t be able to continue,” Yasukochi said to The Japan Times. “If the people involved in the sport can’t improve things, we will have to quit.
“I understand that we are at a crucial moment where a sport that has been around for 100 years could potentially disappear.
“I think everyone is working every day with that mindset.”
Boxing, because of its DNA, has always been at risk of extinction as society pretends to get more civilized and less tolerant of fighting as a means of entertainment. Every time there is a fatality all the same questions will be asked of it and the same pearl-clutching abolitionists will inevitably point out everything boxing does wrong while neglecting to mention all the things it offers men and women who would struggle without it.
Yet, for obvious reasons, this time it feels a little different. This time, by virtue of there being two deaths in such close proximity, the opportunity for us to say, “Well, it’s just one of those things,” is not available. On August 2, it wasn’t just one of those things. It wasn’t even a one-off. It happened twice. Twice in one night. Sixteen per cent of the boxers who boxed at Korakuen Hall that night died following a fight.
“When a person dies it’s something that has a big impact,” Yasukochi said. “If you don’t feel that, then you’re not qualified to be involved in boxing.
“Some people might say that this is a sport where such accidents can happen, but we can’t afford to think that way.
“These things keep happening and we can’t brush them off as coincidences. We need to investigate the causes and manage the aftermath.”
To safeguard the boxers and the sport’s future, the boxing authorities in Japan are now considering a variety of new measures to make the sport safer. These include urine tests to measure dehydration and stricter rules on boxers’ rapid weight loss.
Dehydration, after all, is usually the reason why brains are more susceptible to bleeding. In fact, most boxers who die in the ring tend to be those who had to make weight ahead of the fight.
None of this is new information, of course, but the more prevalent it becomes, the more pressing the issue becomes. Japan, especially, has had a rough time of it of late, with the deaths on August 2 coming less than two years after another Japanese boxer, Kazuki Anaguchi, died following a December 2023 bout in Tokyo. Earlier this year, too, Ginjiro Shigeoka, a 25-year-old minimumweight, collapsed following a fight in Osaka and had to undergo brain surgery as a result. He remains in a coma three months later, though his condition is no longer life-threatening, thankfully.
As the cases against boxing build, it becomes harder and harder to defend it. It also becomes imperative that it’s made as “safe” as possible and that people like Yasukochi waste no time reacting to incidents and paying heed to the signs.
Often a death in boxing is just an unpredictable, freak occurrence, but that doesn’t make it any less tragic or damaging. Nor does the growing number of deaths make it any easier to cope with both death itself and the thought of following a sport in which death is occasionally a by-product of a good, action-packed fight.
It is for this reason Yasukochi says that “everybody feels a strong sense of urgency” to do something about recent events, and why he plans to announce the improvements regarding safety in September.
Even then, one wonders what can really be done to protect men and women so keen to put themselves in harm’s way and measure their success by the damage they inflict. Because, in the end, perhaps the only thing more sobering than seeing tragedy in a boxing ring is knowing that the latest tragedy to have us all question the sport’s morals and safety will not be the last.
