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Young Husband - "If I Am? Even if the World Becomes an Enemy?" (Ft Kazuto Ioka)

4/24/2020

Whilst there are Japanese musicians we are fans of, we won't pretend to be know it alls of the Japanese music scene and we really don't know much about Young Husband other than that their music is J Pop and in 2012 he released a track that roughly translates as "If I Am? Even if the World Becomes an Enemy?"

Thankfully we're not hear, really, to talk about music or Japanese culture, but instead look at the times where professional fighters have featured in music videos. With that in mind we thought we'd share this 2012 release which features a young looking Kazuto Ioka, who was the the then WBC Minimumweight champion.

The video is nothing too interesting, but it's certainly not the worst video or song out there...we're not going to say it's anything amazing, but there is certainly worse out there.

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AK-69 - "It's upside Down" (Featuring Takashi Uchiyama)

4/17/2020

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We continue with this rather strange break from boxing with another in our "boxer in music videos" series, unfortunately we've not come up with a catchier name. This time we use a singer who will be very familiar to Japanese fans, and in fact has often been heard in boxing circles. This video brings him together with a Japanese boxing icon and a Japanese baseball player, Matonobu Tanishige.

The singer in question is rapper AK-69, who's music has been used as walk on music by a number of Japanese fighters including Kazuto Ioka and Akira Yaegashi.

In the video for "Upside Down" we see Matonobu Tanishige discussing things with former WBA Super Featherweight champion Takashi Uchiyama [内山高志]. Sadly the discussion is just in Japanese, with no English subtitles, but it's still interesting to see Uchiyama being featured in a video of such a big Japanese musical star.

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C&K - Michi (Featuring Naoya Inoue)

4/10/2020

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We continue our "boxers in music videos" series today with with one of the most notable fighters in the sport today. And we know this isn't a hugely successful weekly feature, but with no fights taking place we do think it's a fun little extra to take our minds off some of the horrors in the world today.

Japanese genre busters C&K aren't a band we suspect many outside of Japan are familiar with however their 2017 track "Michi" came with a star in their official that we expect everyone reading this site will recognise. That's because the focus of the video is Japanese boxing star Naoya Inoue [井上尚弥].

Given the almost reggae sound of the band it doesn't really fit with the destructive image we all have of Inoue, but suspect it helped the band get some extra attention, in fact it's help us give them attention (and we all know that means soooo much to any Japanese music group!)

One thing that is worth noting is that Inoue is genuinely friends with the guys in C&K and this very much seems to have come about because of their existing friendship, not some cynical business move to increase the bands profile, and they actually are pretty famous in Japan, even if their success outside of their homeland is somewhat limited.

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Daisuke Naito and Natsuki Kato - "Keroro-Japo-down"

4/3/2020

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Due to the growth of coronavirus, and the complete lack of in ring action, we've began looking at boxers in other forms, and the third in this series looks at a duet that former WBC Flyweight champion Daisuke Naito recorded with Natsuki Kato. The song, recorded for a Keroro movie, is very much a fun and playful song.

This is rather cutesy, rather silly and just innocent. Not the sort of thing you'd expect to see come from a former boxing world champion!

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Young Husband - "If I Am? Even if the World Becomes an Enemy?" (Ft Kazuto Ioka)

AK-69 - "It's upside Down" (Featuring Takashi Uchiyama)

C&K - Michi (Featuring Naoya Inoue)

Daisuke Naito and Natsuki Kato - "Keroro-Japo-down"

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