{"id":378670,"date":"2025-12-29T17:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T17:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/378670\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T17:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T17:55:07","slug":"prospect-reito-tsutsumi-concedes-he-needs-to-level-up-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/378670\/","title":{"rendered":"Prospect Reito Tsutsumi Concedes He Needs To ‘Level Up’ In 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reito Tsutsumi<\/a> is intent on improving and “levelling up” after stopping Leobardo Quintana<\/a> on Ring V: Night of the Samurai which took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday night. <\/p>\n

The 23-year-old junior lightweight from Chiba Prefecture in Japan has enjoyed a whirlwind start to his professional career.<\/p>\n

In May he turned professional amid the glitz and glamour of The Ring’s outdoor show in New York and has learned his trade on the grandest of stages.<\/p>\n

In July, he appeared on Ring III which also took place in New York and boxed on the undercard of the mammoth Canelo-Crawford showdown in September. Although the brilliant American stole the headlines<\/a> by relieving Alvarez of The Ring and undisputed super middleweight titles, Tsutsumi’s quick stoppage of Javier Martinez caught plenty of eyes.
Confident that Tsutsumi (4-0, 3 KOs) had grown accustomed to the spotlight and weight of expectation generated by Ring events, matchmakers decided to give him a genuine test and matched him with Mexico’s Quintana<\/a> (12-2, 5 KOs).<\/p>\n

Quintana was tough and aggressive but most importantly, ambitious. Tsutsumi eventually broke him down in the fourth round, though needed to work hard in doing so.<\/p>\n

It was a small but important test and the way Tsutsumi passed it proved that he hasn’t allowed his head to be turned by distractions and attention outside of the ring. <\/p>\n

“It was a bit different than what I expected before. I thought he was a more orthodox boxer but the technique was not what I expected so I had to adjust myself to fight against him,” he said, via a translator during his post-fight interview.<\/p>\n

“When I was preparing for this match, I practiced against a lot of different types of boxers so I could build up my experiences against those different types of boxers. I think that bore some fruit.”<\/p>\n

Tsutsumi’s goal is to box for a world title in his tenth professional fight but the junior lightweight division is a competitive, deep weight class.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On an advanced apprenticeship, he will be given plenty of opportunities to impress and improve but the Quintana fight was a timely reminder just how serious a task he has taken.<\/p>\n

Despite his impressive win, Tsutsumi spoke calmly and realistically about his plans for 2026. <\/p>\n

“Today was far below what I expected so next year I have to level up my boxing step-by-step and in doing so my ranking will go up and the world will come near to me,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reito Tsutsumi is intent on improving and “levelling up” after stopping Leobardo Quintana on Ring V: Night of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,2989,2983,2831,2988,2981,2984,2985,2986,2987,2982,1920,2993,2992,1913,2976,2977,2990,2978,2975,2994,2772,85,2991,2974,2980,2979],"class_list":["post-378670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-community","tag-boxing-fights","tag-boxing-history","tag-boxing-interviews","tag-boxing-magazine","tag-boxing-photos","tag-boxing-rankings","tag-boxing-results","tag-boxing-schedule","tag-boxing-videos","tag-boxing-news","tag-disqualification","tag-draw","tag-fight","tag-fighter","tag-fighter-news","tag-knockout","tag-latest-boxing-matches","tag-ring","tag-ring-magazine","tag-split-decision","tag-sports","tag-technical-knockout","tag-the-ring","tag-top-fighters","tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}