TOKYO - Japan's London Olympic champion Ryota Murata will fight Hassan N'Dam for the vacant World Boxing Association "regular" middleweight crown this coming Saturday night. Photos by Notifight.com
The 31-year-old's first title shot will take place in Tokyo on May 20 against the veteran Cameroon-born Frenchman, who is ranked number one by the WBA.
"I'm grateful for the opportunity to fight for the middleweight crown here in Japan," Murata told reporters. "I expect a very tough fight but I want to leave everything out there and return the blessing of having won an Olympic gold medal."
Japan's only previous middleweight world champion was Shinji Takehara, who won the WBA title in 1995.
But the 33-year-old N'Dam, a former World Boxing Organisation champion who has compiled a record of 35 wins, 21 of them by knockout, against two losses, will provide a stern test for Murata.
The Japanese star, who fights out of Tokyo's Teiken Gym, has won all 12 of his professional bouts, including nine by KO.
N'Dam, a native of Cameroon who fights out of Pantin,Seine-Saint-Denis, France, and a two-time world title challenger, regained the interim WBA middleweight crown for a second time on December 17, scoring a devastating first-round knockout of undefeated defending champion Alfonso Blanco in what many consider the Knockout of the Year for 2016.
Murata, from Tokyo, Japan, won all four of his 2016 bouts by knockout in fights that took place in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Las Vegas and Tokyo. The six-foot fighter captured the Olympic gold medal in the middleweight division at the 2012 Olympics held in London. It was the first gold medal won by a Japanese boxer since Takao Sakurai in 1964, and also is the first-ever boxing medal in a weight class other than bantamweight or flyweight. Murata also became the 100th gold medalist in Japanese Olympic history.
