BERNSTEIN ON BOXING * Inoue won the World Boxing Super Series bantamweight tournament by knocking out former beltholder Juan Carlos Payano and IBF titleholder Emmanuel Rodriguez (who had never been down), then winning an exciting 12-round battle with future Hall of Famer Donaire (who would win another world title in his next fight), in The Ring’s 2019 Fight of the Year. * He moved up in weight and dominated and stopped the
2. He never faced the great lower-weight threesome of Roman Gonzalez, Juan Francisco Estrada and Carlos Cuadras. Well, he was always a weight division or two above Estrada and Cuadras, and in 2016 Inoue’s promoter made an offer to Gonzalez for a fight to unify junior bantamweight titles. Gonzalez
weight class, and Nery is known as a big puncher. Inoue got up and dominated Nery to stop him. Cardenas was the No. 1-ranked fighter by one of the sanctioning bodies going into this fight and had shown to anyone who bothered to look at his video that he was a very good fighter. He fought the fight of his life and still got stopped.
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Virtually every one of the all-time greats in the sport has been knocked down; many were stopped. 4. He has not fought in the U.S. enough. This is my favorite. The jingoism of American fans is on full display here. Seriously, why does this have anything to do with his worth as a fighter? For the record, he has fought in America four times. He has fought U.S.- based fighters a number of times. How many American superstars were loath to go to other countries to fight on a regular basis? Most. It’s hard to justify fighting somewhere else
acknowledged best junior featherweight in the world, Stephen Fulton. This made Inoue a four-division titleholder. * Became undisputed junior featherweight champ by stopping Marlon Tapales, who had just beaten unified titledholer Murodjon Akhmadaliev. Sprinkled in with these accomplishments were wins over other top contenders and
former, current or future titleholders like Jason Moloney, Paul Butler, Jamie McDonnell and Ryoichi Taguchi (in only Inoue’s fourth fight). I am sorry if some boxing fans don’t have enough awareness of the lower weight divisions to know enough about all the opponents I have referenced, but that’s on them, not Inoue. If they want to level the charge of weak opposition, then this is important information. Lest anyone think his schedule is weak moving forward, he is set to face Akhmadaliev in September and then will potentially battle WBC bantamweight titleholder Junto Nakatani in a fight for the ages. You can read in more detail about Inoue’s potential future elsewhere in the magazine.
After being decked heavily by Ramon Cardenas, Inoue battered the challenger from pillar to post.
when you are a superstar in your own country and fill arenas with ease. So you can argue whether this impacts his marketability as an international fighter, but it has no place in a conversation about how good a fighter he might be. I’m here to tell everyone that it is absurd to not think of Naoya Inoue as a boxing star who is one of the best of his generation and will certainly be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Beyond those inescapable conclusions, feel free to debate the pound-for-pound issue or any others connected with him all you want. Advocate for any fighter you want and even say they are better than Inoue if you want. But please, just give this guy his due. He’s earned it.
turned it down because he said the financial terms were not to his liking. “Chocolatito” instead went on to face Srisaket Sor Rungvisai and lost his titles, then lost a rematch. That killed any thought of an Inoue fight, and Inoue moved up to bantamweight shortly after that anyway. 3. He was dropped in two recent fights by Luis Nery and Ramon Cardenas. Consider that both of these happened to Inoue in his fourth
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