Ryota Murata boxer

Ryōta Murata (村田 諒太, Murata Ryōta, born 12 January 1986) is a Japanese professional boxer. He has held the WBA (Super) middleweight title since January 2021 and previously held the WBA (Regular) title twice between 2017 and January 2021. As an amateur, he won a silver medal at the 2011 World Championships, and gold the following year at the 2012 Olympics. As of July 2021, he is ranked as the world's fifth best active middleweight by The Ring.Murata started boxing in the first grade of junior high school. His then trainer was Hiroaki Takami who competed at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Two years later, he started attending Shinko Boxing Gym in Osaka from his home in Nara City. He was trained under the former Japanese super lightweight champion Hiromu Kuwata at that gym for one year.He proceeded to Minami-Kyoto High School and was coached there by Maekawa Takemoto, who served as the coach of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Murata went on to capture five national titles. Takemoto died in 2010, at the age of 50.However, after his admission to Toyo University, he suffered a number of DQ losses in the university league. At that time, he trained at the Physical Training School of the Self Defense Forces, on the recommendation of Takemoto.citation neededAfter winning the All-Japan Amateur Boxing Championships in the first grade of university in 2004, he captured the bronze medal in the 2005 Asian Amateur Boxing Championships in Ho Chi Minh City, and the silver medal in the 2005 King’s Cup in Bangkok. After that, Murata went on an undefeated streak in his country, winning the All-Japan Amateur Boxing Championships also in 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011,. However, he was eliminated in the preliminary round by Nikolajs Grisunins at the 2005 World Amateur Boxing Championships, and was also eliminated in the preliminary round by Bakhtiyar Artayev in the 2006 Asian Games.citation needed