An Baul (KOR) has decided to retire from competition. During his long international career, which started in 2009 at the World Cadet Championships in Budapest, An has achieved many successes including a World title in 2015, and Olympic silver in 2016 and an Asian Games gold in 2018. He also won eight gold medals in the IJF World Tour.
He was something of a nemesis to Japan’s Joshiro Maruyama. They fought a total of eight times and An won three of those encounters, including their first one at the 2017 European Open in Rome. The two other times he defeated Maruyama was in the 2018 Paris Grand Slam final and the 2018 Asian Games final.
No doubt, Maruyama won more of their encounters than he lost but still, the fact that An was able to beat him at major international events is a testament to how good a fighter An was. It’s worth mentioning that from 2016 until his retirement in 2024, Maruyama never lost to any non-Japanese player other than to An.
