I watch pro boxing whenever it’s on. HBO, ESPN, MSG, whatever. I got to wondering last night if there are, or ever were, ranked professional fighters of Japanese or Chinese heritage. Not martial arts, mind you, just straight up boxing. I’m thinking that both countries enter fighters in the Olympics,maybe not,and if they do, have any gone on to pro fame?
Sure. Piston Honda.
:d&r:
There have been far too many champion Oriental boxers to mention them all by name. Orientals heavily dominate the lower weight classes.
Just looking at the current world champions we have :
Superlightweight. Konstantin Tszyu (Australia). (He’s an Oriental Russian with Australian citizenship).
Featherweight. Injin Chi (Korea)
Bantamweight. Veeraphol Nakhonluang (Thailand)
Superflyweight. Masamori Tokuyama (Japan)
Flyweight. Ponsaklek Wonjongkam (Thailand)
Strawweight. Eagle Akakura (Japan)
http://www.wbcboxing.com/WBCboxing/Portal/cfpages/contentmgr.cfm?docId=2&docTipo=8
That’s 6 out of the 17 weight classes currently held by Orientals. That is comparable to the 7 weight classes held by Blacks.
I can only assume that HBO, ESPN, MSG etc never show boxing matches in the lower weight classes if you’ve never seen an Oriental pro Boxer.
You mean “oriental” like middle easterners, or “oriental” like east asians, or something else?
No. I’ve got some nice silk briefs, though!
Guys, keep up here! “Oriental” apparently means of Japanese or Chinese heritage.
Blake must have thought you meant ‘Asian,’ a similar but non-offensive word.
Umm, citrus x paradisi, Oriental and Asian both have exactly the same meaning, and that meaning is Eastern. In this context Asian, Oriental and Eastern are completely interchangable. None of the words is more or less offensive than any of the others unless you arbitrarily decide that one of them is offensive.
Well, I immediately thought of Duk Koo Kim. He’s the fighter who died in the ring fighting Ray Mancini. I’m not sure how good he was, but I do remember that this was the first fight which led me to lose all interest in professional boxing.
He was good enough to fight Boom Boom for the lightweight title, although it’s not exacly like boxing is completely on the up-and-up.
Gotcha beat, Qadgop.
Dragonball Z underoos. 
I wasn’t looking for a geography lesson, guys.
The COUNTRY of China and The COUNTRY of Japan.
…and Duk Ku Kim was Korean.
Ltfire the question asked was ‘Any oriental boxers’. We answered that question. In the process some posters also made an attempt at dispelling a little ignorance you had concerning what Oriental meant.
Not to mention that if you had looked at my list you would see 2 Japanese boxers are not just pros but world champions.
Are you kidding? There were so many in China they started a whole damned rebellion!!
There have been numerous threads discussing the negative associations of the word oriental. Here is one of them which contains links to several more.
Here’s the Usage Note from the American Heritage Dictionary:
Big difference between “strongly preferred” and “offensive. Huge in fact.
When I think of Japanes boxers I think of Boxing HoF’er Masahiko “Fighting” Harada who was probably the greatest Japanese boxer in modern times and won two weight class belts in the 60’s.
He won two epic fights against Eder Jofre the best fighter in the 60’s before the most famous generation of Heavy Weights really emerged
IBF HoF Entry
http://www.ibhof.com/harada.htm
Link goes to Jofre-Harada info
http://espn.go.com/boxing/columns/kellerman_max/234827.html
But not much difference between “offensive” and “offensive.” From my quote above:
Bwahahahahahahahahahaha
Re: Oriental versus Asian. There are numerous threads on the subject. The short version: it’s an issue in the US mainland but not significant anywhere else in the world. Oriental is a colonial-era word with an at best neutral and more likely negative connotation. Most Asian-Americans in the US would much prefer to be referred to by their country of origin and by “Asian” next. Miss Manners would say that if Asians in the US perfer to be called “Asian” than “Oriental” then one should respect that.