Nobuhiro Ishida

Early life and amateur career

Ishida was born in Tamana District, Kumamoto and moved to Neyagawa, Osaka soon after. He began boxing at the Osaka Teiken Boxing Gym at the sixth grade of elementary school (at age eleven). When Ishida was a high school freshman, he fought as an in-fighter in the flyweight division at 176 centimeters (5 feet 10 inches) tall. He won the national high school invitational tournament in the lightweight division in 1993.

After graduating from Kinki University, Ishida won another amateur title in the light middleweight in 1998. He compiled an amateur record of 101–15 (50 KOs). Ishida worked for the child welfare for two years and two months from August 1998. He paused his boxing career to pursue studies, and qualified as a social welfare secretary. Ishida worked at an orphanage. His experience of living with the orphans motivated him to turn professional.

Super Welterweight

Ishida restarted his boxing career in 2000. He made his professional debut on May 20 of that year under the management of Kanazawa Boxing Gym. There he received Toshihiro Fujitani's guidance until the end of 2010. Ishida won the OPBF super welterweight title via a technical decision on March 1, 2001. The bout was stopped in the eleventh round as Ishida's right eye was injured after the accidental headbutt. He managed to get his first title in his sixth match. He lost the unification match against the OPBF interim champion by a twelve-round unanimous decision on May 13, 2001. That was his first loss in his professional career. Ishida lost the Japanese super welterweight title shot in his next fight on September 24 of that year by a ten-round majority decision. In June and October, 2002, Ishida fought for the OPBF and interim Japanese title respectively in the same weight division, but lost two in a row.

At that time, Ishida trained in Los Angeles for the first time to get out of the slump. He watched the boxing matches in Las Vegas and felt that he would like to someday fight there. Loren Goodman noted the words of Ishida in his book published in 2006.

...I went to L.A. at first...but the atmosphere of the gym was really good. L.A. Gym. It was like, "I've come to the Mecca of boxing." It felt really good, and the atmosphere of the gym was good. At first, I went for about a month. America was fun—it was...fun.

Ishida married on Christmas Day, 2003. His wife has worked as a clinical psychologist. They have one daughter and two sons. Ishida captured the vacant Japanese super welterweight title on December 2, 2006, and defended the title twice before vacating it. He has often trained under the guidance of Rudy Hernández at the Maywood Boxing Club in Maywood, California. When Ishida who used to be a in-fighter outpointed the WBA number six and WBC number seven ranked Javier Alberto Mamaní with scores of 100–91, 100–91, 98–94 in October 2007, he had turned into a good defensive out-fighter controlling the fight with his left jabs and forehand blows.

Interim WBA World title

Ishida won the WBA super welterweight title eliminator over Venezuelan Marco Antonio Avendaño via a split decision at the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium on September 22, 2008. He had decided to be a bullfighter for that fight. However, the world title shot against the regular champion Daniel Santos did not materialize. Ishida won the interim WBA world super welterweight title over Avendaño via a wide margin unanimous decision in front of spectators including one hundred children and staff whom he invited from the orphanage where he had worked before his professional debut, at the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium on August 30, 2009. In order to make that matchup, his manager Kanazawa mortgaged building which served as the gym and his home. The purse was not paid to Ishida. Although it was an interim title, no Japanese boxers have regained the world super welterweight title since Tadashi Mihara was dethroned in February 1982. Yet, on that day, the general election where the historical change of government occurred was made in Japan, so Ishida's fight was broadcast only on a pay TV channel, sky-A sports+. Santos lost the title to Yuri Foreman in November 2009. Ishida was eager to fight in a unification match against Foreman, saying that he would go anywhere in the world for it and was confident to win it with his own fighting style and with a way which he most want to show to the audience. But Foreman lost the title in his first defense against Miguel Cotto in June 2010, and Ishida's matchup against Cotto did not happen.

In the first defense of the interim title on December 29, 2009, Ishida defeated Colombian Oney Valdéz by a unanimous decision after knocking him down in the tenth round on the undercard of Kazuto Ioka's non-title light flyweight ten round bout at the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium. While he had been negotiating to fight against Rigoberto Álvarez, Austin Trout arbitrarily released the fight against Ishida in the United States in late August 2010. So the negotiations for the fight between Ishida and Álvarez were halted. When the WBA upgraded Cotto to the status of a super champion in September of that year, Ishida was not automatically promoted to a regular champion. The WBA instructed Ishida and Trout to compete for the vacant WBA regular title. Ishida and Trout were supposed to bid for the match at the WBA headquarters on September 21, but both sides did not participate in it, so the bid was not met. After more twists and turns, the WBA decided Álvarez as Ishida's opponent for the vacant WBA world title, and announced it on their official website in late September.

Ishida fought against Rigoberto Álvarez for the vacant WBA world super welterweight championship as his first expedition match in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico on October 9, 2010, and lost there. It was after several hours of the fight that Ishida was informed that the result was a narrow split decision with scores of 112–115, 113–114 and 114–113. Ishida does not think that he lost the fight, partially because of the controversial knock down call against Ishida in the seventh round which appeared to have been a slip, but he did not protest the decision. In the WBA official ratings published on October 15, Álvarez was designated as an interim champion, Ishida was ranked number four, and the regular champion remained vacant. The JBC (Japan Boxing Commission) immediately asked the WBA about the title of that fight. Instead of a reply, the WBA posted an article where they released the championship for the vacant regular title between Álvarez and Trout in December on their official website. As the WBA ordered, Ishida vs. Álvarez was held as a regular championship by the promoter. Ishida, Álvarez, Televisa which aired that fight and the media in many countries had recognized that they fought for the world title. Nevertheless, after all, it was positioned as per the WBA official ratings as a defense of the interim title which Ishida had held.

After that defeat, Ishida's team had to change his fighting style yet again, especially because once he decided to fight outside of his own country. Ishida signed a management contract with Japan's Green-Tsuda Boxing Club and a three-fight promotional contract with Mexico's Canelo Promotions under the supervision of Edison Reynoso who handled the previous fight.

Ishida vs. Kirkland

Ishida moved up in weight division to knock out the previously undefeated James Kirkland whose record was 27–0 (24 KOs), flooring him three times in one minute and fifty-two seconds of the first round in an eight-round middleweight bout on the HBO pay-per-view televised undercard of Erik Morales vs. Marcos Maidana at the MGM Grand Las Vegas on April 9, 2011, in less than a month after the Tōhoku earthquake. Nori Takatani (who was the manager of Genaro Hernández, Oscar Albarado and others), Rudy Hernández, Daisuke Okabe and Hidenobu Honda from Green-Tsuda (who was the Japanese champion and two-time world title challenger) were in Ishida's corner. The fight was released just about two weeks before the fight. During the short preparation time, Ishida trained in Las Vegas and California, including sparring with big boxers such as Peter Quillin. Prior to the fight, Ishida's team decided to never throw roundhouse punches, and was careful with where on the ring he should be. The announcer Jim Lampley said that it was a bigger upset than Buster Douglas beating Mike Tyson in 1990. It was voted as the Upset of the Year in The Ring's 83rd Annual Ring Awards and SI.com's 2011 Boxing Awards. In addition, in the RingTV.com's year-end polls for 2011, it attracted 22.6 percent of the vote for the Upset of the Year (ranking third), and 9.2 percent of the vote for the KO of the Year (ranking second by a large margin). Ishida was not happy with the status of the former interim champion, and was still not satisfied with knocking out Kirkland on such a big stage.

After that upset, Reynoso announced he has a big plan for Ishida. Sampson Lewkowicz, the adviser of Sergio Gabriel Martínez, made an offer to Ishida as one of the possible opponents for Martínez. Ishida was once scheduled to fight Paul Williams at a maximum weight of 155 pounds on July 9, 2011, at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. However it was canceled. Soon as Julio César Chávez, Jr. told that Ishida was his possible opponent, Ishida phoned from Sacramento, California, and welcomed the match. They had been negotiating the fight, but it was not also signed. Despite the efforts of Eric Gomez, the vice president and matchmaker of Golden Boy Promotions, Ishida's opponent was quite undecided.

According to a YouTube video by Canelo Promotions and Ishida's blog as of November 2011, although Ishida is most comfortable in the middleweight division, he is willing to move in weight classes, since he thinks he had better prepare the opportunity in possible multiple classes than pick a weight class, until the right offer comes. Having trained in Los Angeles from July 2011, he served as Saúl Álvarez's sparring partner at his training camp in Mexico from November of that year. Ishida won by a technical knockout in the first round against late substitute opponent Edson Espinoza on the undercard of Saúl Álvarez vs. Kermit Cintrón on November 26, 2011.

Ishida vs. Williams

Ishida fought against Paul Williams in a twelve-round super welterweight bout held as the main event on Showtime Championship Boxing at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, on February 18, 2012. For that fight, he sparred with Hugo Centeno, Jr., Ray Rivera and others, in Maywood, Bell, Carson and East Los Angeles, California. Ishida made it an inside fight where power punches accounted for a larger proportion than jabs. Williams' bodywork skills and holding tactics did not allow Ishida to throw accurate punches, compared with the five fights against Kirkland, Álvarez, Valdéz and Avendaño twice. Ishida's single shots and not many combinations, although they were sometimes shorter and sharper than those of his opponent as were his characteristic ways and made Williams' face swollen, were not enough to make up for the lack of power and physical strength which has often been pointed out. He lost the fight via a unanimous decision by the identical scores of 108–120, but managed to put himself in position to earn another decent opportunity. Ishida's rankings dropped slightly to number three and number nine in the WBA super welterweight and WBO middleweight, respectively.

Ishida vs. Pirog

Subsequently, Ishida lost to Dmitry Pirog via a unanimous decision in the WBO middleweight title bout at the Sport Complex Krylatskoe in Moscow, Russia on May 1 of that year. As the JBC had been hesitant to allow that fight, Ishida resigned his JBC license on April 27, 2012. Hence, Ishida had not been permitted to fight in Japan from that time forward in principle. He has been licensed in California and Texas. In June 2012, Ishida underwent surgery to remove bone chips in his left elbow that had plagued him for years.

Ishida vs. Golovkin

On March 15, 2013, just before the JBC joined the WBO and the IBF, they gave Ishida permission to fight under the JBC license. Thus, he is allowed to fight anywhere in the world.

Ishida fought for the WBA and IBO middleweight titles against Gennady Golovkin at the Salle des Étoiles in Monte Carlo, Monaco on March 30, 2013. The bout was co-featured to the "Monte Carlo Million Dollar Super Four", a light heavyweight elimination tournament. He was knocked out for the first time in his career by Golovkin's overhand right in the third round.

Ishida made a return to the ring in Japan in August 2013.

Titles and recognitions