NAOYA INOUE VS. WILLIE PEP
Two iconic fighters from the lower weight classes prepare for battle.
WILLIE PEP ® Born: September 11, 1922, in Middletown, Connecticut ® Birth name: Guglielmo Papaleo ® Nickname: “Will o’ the Wisp” ® Died: November 23, 2006 ® Height, reach: 5-foot-5, 68 inches ® Stance: Orthodox ® Career record: 229-11-1 (65 KOs) ® Titles held: Ring, NBA, NYSAC featherweight ® Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year: 1945 Pep fought a total of 1,954 rounds in his 26-year career, retiring at age 43. He won his first 62 pro fights before losing to Sammy Angott in 1943, then went loss-free for another 72 fights before getting knocked out by Saddler in 1948. The last 25 fights of that streak came after Pep sustained serious injuries in a plane crash, which kept him out of the ring for only six months. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. STRENGTHS: One-of-a-kind boxing skills, uncanny hand and foot speed, elusiveness and ring generalship. He was an accurate puncher who could land from any angle on the move. Also, he was a fearless, tough and resilient fighter who knew every boxing move in the book, and he was a seasoned 15-round fighter with the stamina and grit to fight often and go the distance against the best in the business.
with his ass on fire, swinging a golf club at my head after I flattened that guy who kept bothering me. Some reporter wrote up the incident. I love Willie, so I let it slide. “Push the wrong button on Pep and he will be glad to show anybody how tough he is. He’s got a temper that makes me look like a choirboy. He is as tough as they come, Rock. You know that.” “OK,” responds Graziano. “Then he has to toughen up his body more to take this kid’s body shots and then do his usual job on the guy of hit-and- don’t-get-hit, but faster this time. I’ll talk to Willie, Bill Gore, Ray Arcel and Lou Viscusi, because this guy Inoue seems stronger than Saddler was. Pep has to do something different; he looks too frail sometimes, relying just on speed. “He has to put some more juice on his shots, put some kind of hurt on Inoue so he doesn’t walk through him all night.” LaMotta says, “Yeah, I agree. More power without losing any speed on the move and keep boxing him for 12 rounds like before – without eating too many of this guy’s body shots. I lost a lot of dough on that fight, and I want it back with a big win for Willie. “I know just who to see if he will do it, if Willie and his corner agree to one or two more specialized trainers for him in camp.” P ep is leaving the Du-Well Athletic Club in Norwich, Connecticut, where he is training for the fight, when he sees two hard-looking guys leaning on his car with their backs to him. “Get off my fucking car.” He hears them both laughing. Pep rushes up to them with his fists clenched. “You think this is funny?” Graziano turns around. “You going
Inoue is the extremely rare fighter who has become an undisputed champion in two weight divisions. He is known for a crowd-pleasing style that combines fantastic boxing skills with crushing power and a desire to use it. His dedication to his training regimen is also reminiscent of the hardest-training fighters in boxing history. STRENGTHS: Precise, accurate punching power to the head and body, great stamina, fierce determination, always at championship-level condition. His systematic breakdown of his opponents is reminiscent of Julio Cesar Chavez’s brutal short punches, thrown with accuracy and finesse. WEAKNESSES: So far in his pro career, there are no glaring weaknesses, except for perhaps a tendency to leave himself open sometimes. He was dropped by Ramon Cardenas and Luis Nery, but it only seemed to energize him.
getting hit with a brick at the end of a rope. With Inoue, it’s like getting shot.” Pep had agreed to fight Inoue in Japan with a rematch clause in effect. Once there, he had complained about the long plane ride. “After my plane accident, I was a nervous wreck spending that amount of time in any plane,” said Pep. “I never got over the tension of it. “I am not making excuses. Inoue was in great shape and he hurt me to the body throughout the fight. He had me down three times before the ref stopped it in the 10th. “Despite all that, one judge had me winning up until the 10th. The other two gave it to him, but I couldn’t breathe. He broke a couple of my ribs and caught me with that liver shot. I got up, didn’t I, but the ref stopped it. I underestimated him. It won’t happen again. This time I am not taking any long plane rides for this fight.” When the press played up the fact
that Pep was ahead on one judge’s scorecard with his brilliant display of boxing guile going into the 10th round, a rematch was not a hard sell. Turki Alalshikh wanted the fight in Saudi Arabia but graciously understood Pep’s request to have it in Madison Square Garden and agreed to promote the fight there. Two months before the rematch, Jake LaMotta and Rocky Graziano sat together in a bar that Pep had an interest in on 7th Avenue in Manhattan. They had just left a fight show at Madison Square Garden and were discussing Inoue’s stoppage of Pep. Rocky says, “Willie got hurt bad last time with this kid. He better get tougher this time.” LaMotta responds: “Tougher? Think of where you’re sitting right now? This is the place where Pep chased me the fuck out of here because he didn’t want any fighting in his joint. He came after me from behind the bar like a maniac
PRE-FIGHT EVENTS: Word reached the boxing world that a rematch between Naoya Inoue and Willie Pep was in the works. It had been eight months since Inoue shocked the boxing world by stopping Pep in the 10th round of a brutal fight held in Japan for all the featherweight belts. The consensus was that Pep had underestimated Inoue. Pep was quoted as saying before their first fight, “This kid has had only 30 fights. When I was 22 years old, I had 100 pro bouts.” Before their fight, when pressed by boxing writers who kept bringing up Inoue’s punching power, Pep’s retort at the time was to point out that The Ring Magazine had rated Saddler as the third-hardest puncher of all time. After Inoue vs. Pep 1, one reporter asked Pep in his dressing room to compare the punching power of Saddler to Inoue. Pep said, “Let’s just say getting hit by Sandy Saddler is like
WEAKNESSES: Lack of punching power.
NAOYA INOUE 井上尚弥 ® Born: April 10, 1993, Zama, Kanagawa, Japan ® Nickname: “The Monster” ® Height, reach: 5-foot-5, 67½ inches ® Stance: Orthodox ® Record: 31-0 (27 KOs) ® Titles held: WBC junior flyweight, WBO junior bantamweight, Ring/IBF/WBA/WBC/ WBO bantamweight, Ring/IBF/WBA/WBC/ WBO junior featherweight ® Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year: 2023
78 RINGMAGAZINE.COM
RINGMAGAZINE.COM 79
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker