Another decision! What Tenshin Nasukawa “lacks”, direct words from former world champions Masataka Taniguchi & Ryoichi Taguchi.

And finally, Shigeru Masuda, 65, a boxing analyst who has been watching the ring for half a century. He commented calmly based on his deep insight.

At the moment, Nasukawa has the punching power to put a knockout on a fighter, but he does not have the style to finish a fighter without fail. That may be due to his instinctive nature. Nasukawa’s debut reminded me of Pernell Whitaker, a southpaw defensive master like Nasukawa who won four weight classes from lightweight to super welterweight at the end of the 20th century. Whitaker was also a lightweight gold medalist at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and there is an anecdote that an American journalist was astonished to see a world-ranked fighter fighting in the fourth round in his professional debut.

The common point with Nasukawa is a “sense of slackness. His body is relaxed and floats, and the harder his opponent punches, the further away he is from him, like a balloon in the wind. This is nothing short of the art of having an excellent sense of distance. In addition, he does not use a counterclockwise (left) rotation, which is the theory of southpaws, but a clockwise (right) rotation, just like an orthodox fighter.

What is different is that Whitaker’s basic form has a lower center of gravity, and instead of striking while floating, he instantly stops and lowers his center of gravity to create a “tame” position when he is certain he will hit a target. This led to the accuracy and effectiveness of his left-right and up-and-down strikes, and provided Whitaker with a variety of patterns for knocking down opponents, such as the left straight followed by the right hook, which is rarely seen in Nasukawa’s game at this point. This was the result of a sense of distance cultivated through a focus on boxing.

Whitaker can hit his opponent’s axis without letting him shift his axis and hit him, but Nasukawa cannot. Nasukawa’s greatest advantage lies in his superior danger-sensing ability and reaction speed, but it seems as if the switch that converts between “offensive” and “defensive” modes is ingrained in his body, with “defensive” as the default setting. Therefore, as a common fault often seen in former top amateurs who have hardened themselves in a style in which one hit can make the difference between a point and a win, it cannot be said that they have a strong awareness of connecting to follow-up after an effective hit.

One example of this is the lack of a finishing pattern as a southpaw due to the lack of a right hook return, but the effective hit should not <end there> but should essentially <begin there>. The most advanced embodiment of this is, of all people, Naoya Inoue.

However, if Tenshin blindly seeks KOs and tries to fundamentally rework his style, he runs the risk of causing some kind of breakdown in the existing system. without landing a single punch. Whee I think it would not be a bad idea to pursue the path of a wizard, a type of technician not seen in conventional Japanese boxers such as Willie Taker and Willie Pep.

When Nasukawa announced his decision to switch to boxing, Teiken Gym President Akihiko Honda said, “If he is going to fight for us, we must make him a world champion. How will Nasukawa climb the wall in the future?