After a bizarre set of circumstances regarding his last two fights, longtime WBC bantamweight world champion Shinsuke Yamanaka has announced his retirement from the sport for the second time.
Yamanaka retired during a special press conference in Tokyo, officially ending a boxing career that started when Yamanaka was only 15 years old. The former world champion has been a professional boxer since 2006.
This was the second retirement for Yamanaka after he had retired following his first loss to Luis Nery for the WBC title. Nery was later found to have failed a drug test and so Yamanaka came back to fight Nery in a rematch and win back the title.
During weigh-ins for the second fight, Nery came in massively overweight and was therefore stripped of the title. Nery would then score a TKO win over Yamanaka on March 1 in Tokyo, but the title remained vacant.
Having held the WBC bantamweight world title from 2011 to 2017, Yamanaka successfully defended his title 12 times and held the belt for 2,109 days. Both of those stats are the second-most for a WBC bantamweight world champion in boxing history. Yamanaka is also a former Japanese bantamweight champion with his last non-world title fight being against current IBF super bantamweight champion Ryosuke Iwasa.
Yamanaka owns victories over the likes of Iwasa, Vic Darchinyan, Tomas Rojas, Alberto Guevara, Anselmo Moreno and Liborio Solis. He retires with a 27-2-2 record with 19 KO. Yamanaka also sports an impressive 13-2 record in world title fights and an 8-2 record against current or former world champions.
