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As Japan gears up for its customary slate of year-end boxing violence, there’s been one name missing: WBC light flyweight champ Kenshiro Teraji, who hasn’t seen action in 2020. As it turns out, he was preparing to face #1 contender Tetsuya Hisada on December 19th, only for the fight to be canceled due to a drunk driving incident on the champion’s part. According to Asian Boxing, the Japanese Boxing Commission has suspended him three months, levied a fine, and ordered him to perform community service.
According to Teraji (17-0, 10 KO), he accidentally pulled onto another person’s property while returning from a “drunken dinner” and ended up damaging their car.
Considering some of the punishments the JBC has imposed in the past, most notably in the case of Daigo Higa, Teraji honestly got off pretty easily. Hopefully we’ll see him in action before too long; once he’s dealt with Hisada, we can go back to hoping for a unification match between him and WBA “super” champ Hiroto Kyoguchi, who himself missed out on a recent title defense due to COVID.