Yōkō Gushiken

Thirteen consecutive title defences. That number is basically the whole man. Yoko Gushiken, born on Ishigaki Island in Okinawa in 1955, held the WBA light-flyweight belt from 1976 to 1981, and each of those nights was a coin flip on his entire career. Doing that once takes nerve. Doing it thirteen times takes a stubbornness I can barely picture, and he did it at 162 centimetres in one of the smallest weight classes there is. What I admire just as much is the second act. After retiring in 1981 he became a television personality, and rather than trade on the menace of a former champion he let himself be the warm, funny one. Fighters often calcify into legends. He turned into someone people are simply glad to see, and the 2015 Hall of Fame induction never changed that.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Yōkō Gushiken

Name (Japanese)

具志堅用高

Reading

ぐしけん ようこう

Born

June 26, 1955 (age 71)

Origin

Ishigaki, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan

Height

162 cm

Occupation

boxer / tarento

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Cancer / Goat

High school

Konan High School

Awards & achievements

• 2015 International Boxing Hall of Fame
• WBA World Light Flyweight Champion

Works summary

Appearances

38 (1978–2025)

By year (titles with a known year)

1978: 1, 1980: 2, 1983: 2, 1985: 1, 1990: 3, 2001: 1, 2002: 1, 2003: 1, 2005: 1, 2008: 1, 2010: 2, 2011: 3, 2012: 3, 2013: 1, 2015: 3, 2016: 1, 2021: 1, 2022: 2, 2024: 2, 2025: 1, year unknown: 5

Filmography / notable works

• Xhttps://x.com/Real_Gushiken
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko%20Gushiken
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%B7%E5%BF%97%E5%A0%85%E7%94%A8%E9%AB%98
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q649104

Tags

• Okinawa Prefecture
• boxer
• tarento

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.