By Joe Koizumi
Photos by Naoki Fukuda

Fightnews.com

The headliner of the week is Japanese middleweight prospect Ryota Murata who announced on Thursday that he would go on and pursue the world belt again although he failed to win the vacant WBA 160-pound throne via highly controversial decision to Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam here in Tokyo on May 20. Murata became a hero after he impressively gained the Olympic gold medal in the middleweight category in London in 2012. He, despite his disputed defeat, has again become a national hero since the public saw Murata decisively win over N’Dam and Murata remained sportsman-like without complaining of the problematic verdict. The WBA promptly suspended a couple of judges: Gustavo Padilla and Hubert Earl, and made an order of a direct rematch between them. Murata, however, didn’t mention any on his next target as to whether it will be N’Dam or another titleholder of another organization. The ex-gold medalist said, “I didn’t lose anything but the belt in that fight as I could gain confidence in myself and good experience in the world title bout. Next time I’ll do my best to win the world belt.” Good luck.