Jorge Linares is coming back to Japan later this year.
The former lightweight world champion will be returning to the ring on a Korakuen Hall show in Tokyo on September 7, per an announcement made by Teiken Promotions, Linares’ Japanese promoter. No opponent for Linares was mentioned in the announcement.
#teamlinares in Tokyo again -- pic.twitter.com/omNOeINNhe
— ホルヘ・リナレス (@JorgeLinares) July 22, 2019
This will be Linares’ first fight in Japan since December 2014 when he knocked out Javier Prieto in the fourth round to capture the WBC lightweight title. Linares, who was born and raised in Venezuela, traveled to Japan to start out his pro career under the tutelage of the Teiken Boxing Gym and would fight in Japan in 18 of his first 23 pro bouts. Despite the many fights in Japan, Linares has only ever faced two boxers native to the country — Thunder Ito in 2003 and Nihito Arakawa in 2014.
Linares has held multiple world titles throughout his career, winning belts across three different weight classes. After winning the WBC featherweight title in 2007, Linares moved up to super featherweight the following year, winning the WBA title with a fifth-round win over Whyber Garcia. After an unsuccessful attempt at winning a lightweight world title in 2011, Linares got to become a three-division champion in 2014 with the win over Prieto. The 33-year-old then won the WBA title in 2016 and after three successful title defenses, he would lose the title to Vasiliy Lomachenko in May 2018.
Now without a belt, Linares went to campaign at junior welterweight and even won a bounce back fight against Abner Cotto last September. His last fight saw him lose to Pablo Cesar Cano in a shocking first-round stoppage this past January at Madison Square Garden as part of the undercard for a DAZN card headlined by Demetrius Andrade’s WBO middleweight title defense against Artur Akavov.
