Takeru Is Retiring On His Own Terms And Rodtang Is The Only Fight That Could Have Made That Possible
Takeru Segawa has been thinking about retirement for three or four years. Not because he was ready to stop, but because he wanted to choose the right moment before the sport chose it for him.
For the former three-division K-1 Champion, the line between fighting at full strength and beginning a slow, public decline is one he has watched carefully. He saw where it was heading. He decided to act before it moved.
“The condition of my body was my top consideration,” he said. “The moment when I thought that this would truly be the last time I could fight in my strongest condition was probably about a year ago.”
That assessment produced the announcement: his final professional fight will be in the main event of ONE SAMURAI 1 on Wednesday, April 29, at Ariake Arena in Tokyo. His opponent is Rodtang Jitmuangnon. The ONE Interim Flyweight Kickboxing World Title is on the line.
There is no more fitting end, and Takeru knows it. He joined ONE Championship to fight Rodtang. He pushed through a debut loss to Superlek, rebuilt himself in the aftermath of what Rodtang did to him at ONE 172, and returned last November to deliver a highlight-reel finish over Denis Puric that proved the finishing power was still very much intact.
But the Rodtang loss has never left him. It is the source of his obsession with this rematch, and the reason he chose not to walk away after Puric.
“The essence of my fighting style is a slugfest, and I’ve always wanted to have that kind of fight with Rodtang,” he said. “The last fight, I couldn’t even reach that point and lost. This is why I always believed I must fight Rodtang one more time. That’s the reason I have come this far.”
The retirement decision is not draped in sadness. He is still training hard, still preparing the way a champion prepares, and he has no interest in treating April 29 as anything other than the most important fight of his career.
“The fight is not over, so I don’t have sadness or similar feelings associated with retirement,” he said. “Because the next match will be the last, I’m spending each day so that I can give everything I have and retire without any regrets.”
What sits beneath the surface is something heavier. Takeru is acutely aware of what a winning result means to the fans who have followed every chapter of his career and to the team and family who have sacrificed alongside him.
April 29 carries the weight of all of it.
“I want to show a victory to those who have supported me, to everyone on my team, and my family,” he said. “Since coming to ONE, I feel like I betrayed their feelings by losing fights. But this is my chance to let them see me retire as the strongest in the world.”
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