No matter how the words are cut, framed, or replayed, Ryoma Takeda has already moved past them. The interviews, the speculation, the friction, none of it lodges where it might have once.
The belt may still feel unreal, the memory incomplete, but the past itself no longer demands an answer from him.
But the message still lands hard elsewhere.
Less than three weeks before his own title fight, Shimamura Suzuki sits alone on a sagging sofa, a new bottle of liquor resting unopened against his thigh.
The same breaking news comes up on the television in front of him, and only then does he look at it, remote idle in his grip.
Ryoma's face fills the screen, OPBF champion. That fact alone stings more than he expects.
The report cuts between clips; Ryoma's calm answers at Narita, the measured tone, the refusal to bite. Then the anchor pivots, smoothly, to Japan's Lightweight Champion already speaking about a future challenge, already looking past the defense that's right in front of him.
