{"id":497652,"date":"2026-02-22T23:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T23:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/497652\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T23:09:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T23:09:12","slug":"unbeaten-us-world-champion-says-he-can-expose-naoya-inoue-itll-make-me-one-of-the-greats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/497652\/","title":{"rendered":"Unbeaten US world champion says he can ‘expose’ Naoya Inoue: “It’ll make me one of the greats”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two-division undisputed champion Naoya Inoue<\/a> has been called out by an unbeaten American star, but must first take care of business against Junto Nakatani later this year.<\/p>\n

The 32-year-old is expected to lock horns with domestic rival Nakatani in May<\/a>, defending his four major super-bantamweight titles at the Tokyo Dome, Japan.<\/p>\n

In anticipation of their blockbuster showdown, the pair fought on the same card in December, with Inoue handily defeating David Picasso by unanimous decision.<\/p>\n

Former unified bantamweight king Nakatani, on the other hand, claimed a largely contentious points victory over Sebastian Hernandez in his first outing at 122lbs.<\/p>\n

Regardless of this, Inoue is set to enter their tussle as a sizable favourite, while three-weight world champion Nakatani nonetheless represents a significant challenge.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the lower divisions, meanwhile, newly-crowned WBC champion Bruce Carrington has been typically vocal about a potential encounter with \u2018The Monster\u2019.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old claimed his world featherweight title last month \u2013 orchestrating a destructive ninth-round finish over Carlos Castro<\/a> \u2013 but now seems determined to secure the biggest fights possible.<\/p>\n

One of which, of course, would be a monumental title defence against Inoue, who is widely regarded as a top two pound-for-pound operator.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Cigar Talk<\/a>, Carrington doubled down on his interest in their possible matchup at 126lbs while, at the same time, acknowledging that the Japanese sensation must first get past Nakatani.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like that fight is going to happen, man. We\u2019ve just got to wait for everything to fall into place.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got Nakatani [next]. He\u2019s got to make a decision on if he\u2019s actually going to move up [to featherweight].<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that [Ramon] Cardenas fight, he was kind of a little shaky. There\u2019s still holes in his game that fall right into my game. I wanna expose that to the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanna be the first one to beat Inoue and be known as one of the greats in boxing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fight Carrington refers to, against Cardenas, saw Inoue climb off the canvas for only the second time in his career, before halting his man with an eighth-round finish in May 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two-division undisputed champion Naoya Inoue has been called out by an unbeaten American star, but must first take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-497652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497652","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=497652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}