{"id":153054,"date":"2025-09-18T22:46:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T22:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/153054\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T22:46:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T22:46:13","slug":"inoue-nakatani-to-co-headline-dec-card-with-eye-on-26-showdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/153054\/","title":{"rendered":"Inoue, Nakatani to co-headline Dec. card with eye on ’26 showdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Andreas HaleSep 19, 2025, 07:58 AM<\/p>\n

Close<\/a>Andreas Hale is a combat sports reporter at ESPN. Andreas covers MMA, boxing and pro wrestling. In Andreas’ free time, he plays video games, obsesses over music and is a White Sox and 49ers fan. He is also a host for Sirius XM’s Fight Nation. Before joining ESPN, Andreas was a senior writer at DAZN and Sporting News. He started his career as a music journalist for outlets including HipHopDX, The Grammys and Jay-Z’s Life+Times. He is also an NAACP Image Award-nominated filmmaker as a producer for the animated short film “Bridges” in 2024.<\/p>\n

Naoya Inoue has booked his fourth fight of the year just days after he successfully defended his undisputed junior featherweight championship against Murodjon Akhmadaliev.<\/p>\n

Inoue will take on Mexico’s Alan David Picasso on Dec. 27 at Mohammed Abdo Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, it was announced Thursday. The co-main event of the card will see Junto Nakatani put his WBC and IBF bantamweight titles on the line against Sebastian Hernandez.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n

2 Related<\/p>\n

If Inoue and Nakatani win their respective fights, the expectation is that they will meet in a massive showdown in 2026.<\/p>\n

Inoue (31-0, 27 KOs), who scored a wide decision over Akhmadaliev<\/a> on Sunday, hasn’t been this active since 2013, just one year into his professional career. He has defeated Ki Ye-Joon, Ramon Cardenas and Ahkmadaliev in 2025 and looks to add Picasso to his list of conquered opponents. Picasso (32-0-1, 17 KOs) last fought in July when he won a majority decision over Kyonosuke Kameda in a 10-round fight.<\/p>\n

Nakatani (31-0, 24 KOs) has fought twice in 2025 thus far with stoppages of Ryosuke Nishida<\/a> and David Cuellar Contreras. He has actively pursued a showdown with Inoue and will get his chance if he can take out Hernandez (20-0, 18 KOs).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andreas HaleSep 19, 2025, 07:58 AM CloseAndreas Hale is a combat sports reporter at ESPN. Andreas covers MMA,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-153054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}