{"id":399558,"date":"2026-01-08T10:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T10:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/399558\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T10:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T10:47:08","slug":"naoya-inoue-vs-junto-nakatani-planned-for-may-2nd-at-tokyo-dome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/399558\/","title":{"rendered":"Naoya Inoue vs Junto Nakatani planned for May 2nd at Tokyo Dome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Arguably the biggest fight on the schedule has a working date and location, as Jake Donovan <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boxingscene.com\/articles\/naoya-inoue-junto-nakatani-superfight-targeted-for-may-2-at-tokyo-dome\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reports<\/a> that undisputed super bantamweight champion Naoya Inoue and former three-division champion Junto Nakatani \u201cis targeted to take place on May 2 at the famed Tokyo Dome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">This would mark Inoue\u2019s (32-0, 27 KO) second appearance at the Dome, having previously welcomed Luis Nery back to the Land of the Rising Sun with a vicious knockout in May 2024. It would also mark his longest layoff since that event; \u201cThe Monster\u201d fought four times in 2025 alone, knocking out Ye Joon Kim and Ramon Cardenas before cruising to decisions against Murodjon Akhmadaliev and David Picasso. He stated afterwards that the workload was wearing on him, so it\u2019s not surprising he\u2019s giving himself a bit more time to recuperate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The rest will certainly be welcomed by Nakatani (32-0, 24 KO), who ran over the undefeated David Cuellar and Ryosuke Nishida in his first fights of 2025 before narrowly escaping the relentless Sebastian Hernandez in Riyadh. He fought through some serious swelling in his eye, but appears to have avoided significant injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">This is not just a clash between pound-for-pound talents, but a battle of elite finishers whose styles play into each other\u2019s weaknesses. Barring something truly special coming down the pipeline, this has a strong chance of being the unmissable boxing event of 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arguably the biggest fight on the schedule has a working date and location, as Jake Donovan reports that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,1920,85],"class_list":["post-399558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399558","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=399558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}