Scott watches countless hours of boxing each week. His specialty is Asian Boxing and he covers the Asian scene on both Ringnews24 and Asian Boxing. His articles are very insightful and anyone who doesn’t follow the Asian scene can keep up-to-date by reading his articles.

Japanese boxing is on a high at the moment, with the young talent in particular being very exciting. On New Year’s Eve we saw Kosei Tanaka, one of those youngsters, show his incredible ability as he became a 2-weight champion in just 8 fights and have his bout streamed globally courtesy of CBC. A day before that we saw Naoya Inoue shine, once again, as he stopped compatriot Kohei Kono in very impressive fashion.

Although both are amazing fighters Tanaka and Inoue are both likely to become the next victims of two issues that have long been a problem with Japanese fighters when it comes to connecting with a wider Western audience. The first of those is language and the second is size division.

Western fans, at the moment at least, are showing some interest in following the lower weights, particularly the Super Flyweight division which has a number of fighters than fans are connecting with, like Roman Gonzalez, Kal Yafai, Jamie Conlan, Rex Tso and the aforementioned Inoue. There is however still a stigma of them being “little guys”, and at 5′ 4½″ both Inoue and Tanaka are small fighters.

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One fighter possibly able to change things in the years to come is another youngster, 19 year old Hinata Maruta (4-0, 3) who is naturally much taller than Tanaka and Inoue and has spent quite a lot of time in the US. In fact as I’m writing this he is currently in America as part of a training camp and is spending time in California. That time in America is used primarily to hone his boxing skills and develop his fighting but, as a side benefit, the youngster will also be picking up bits of English, something he will also be able to do with Japanese based American stablemate Brandon Lockhart Shane.

Amazingly this isn’t Murata’s first training camp in America, in fact he was there for a prolonged camp last year and also attended the WBC convention in Miami late last year. With all the time he’s getting in America it could well be that the youngster is already planning for his career long term and he, and his team, are already sewing the seeds for relationships which will be key in the years to come.

Whilst learning English, and creating US contacts, is a great idea Murata also has that size that I mentioned earlier. Unlike Inoue and Tanaka, who will likely suffer seriously at Bantamweight given their lack of height, Maruta has the potential to fight through the weights. He is a tall Bantamweight at 5′ 9½″ and pictures from the WBC convention showed that he was taller than Floyd Mayweather Jr. He’s no small guy, just one who is still young and still filling out a very tall and rangy frame.

Potentially Maruta will fight at Bantamweight for the next year or two, but a move to Super Bantamweight, Featherweight, Super Featherweight and potentially Lightweight in the future has to be expected as he matures and starts to add on mass. Given his frame adding 17lbs wouldn’t make him look out of shape and will likely be added without many problems in the future. Fighting at Featherweight, or above, will endear him to American fans in the future, and could, potentially, see him become one of the few Japanese fighters to actually crack America.

Although he’s still some time away from making a mark on the US market he has the look, size, intelligence, team and connections to really make a big impact over there in the years to come. It’s clear that he’s making the right moves early in his career for a journey to stardom and it’ll be well worth following him in the years to come, as he moves from the Japanese scene to potentially becoming a genuine boxing star.

Scott Graveson covers the Asian boxing scene for www.asianboxing.info