{"id":842628,"date":"2026-08-04T00:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T00:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/842628\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T00:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T00:34:08","slug":"naoya-inoue-sets-strict-deadline-for-super-fight-against-fellow-undefeated-ko-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/842628\/","title":{"rendered":"Naoya Inoue sets strict deadline for super fight against fellow undefeated KO artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

The proposed super-fight between Naoya Inoue<\/a> and Jesse Rodriguez<\/a> has to take place soon otherwise the Japanese superstar will seemingly turn his attention elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Inoue and Rodriguez have been linked to each other in recent months, with the hopes of seeing them meet only increasing after they both claimed impressive wins within a few weeks of one another.<\/p>\n

Back in May, Inoue retained his undisputed super bantamweight crown with a unanimous decision win over fellow unbeaten star and domestic rival Junto Nakatani<\/a>, extending his record to 33-0 with 27 knockouts in the process.<\/p>\n

It was then the turn of \u2018Bam\u2019 when he competed in June, stepping up to bantamweight and knocking out WBA champion Antonio Vargas to become a three-division world champion.<\/p>\n

While he has only competed once at bantamweight, Rodriguez is willing to move up again to super-bantamweight in order to meet Inoue, but his trainer Robert Garcia has stated that they may prefer one more fight at 118lbs before leaving that division.<\/a><\/p>\n

They may now have to rethink that strategy, after Inoue\u2019s agent told The Ring<\/a> that the Japanese icon has set a deadline of March 2027 for the fight to take place.<\/p>\n

With March just seven months away, it would need an extremely quick turnaround for \u2018Bam\u2019 to fight on two occasions, so despite being linked to a unification clash with WBO champion Christian Medina, it would seem unlikely for that to be achievable.<\/p>\n

Inoue is set to sit out the rest of 2026 so a possible fight with Rodriguez would be his next outing, but if \u2018Bam\u2019 can\u2019t abide by the deadline now in place, a new opponent would have to be sought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The proposed super-fight between Naoya Inoue and Jesse Rodriguez has to take place soon otherwise the Japanese superstar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-842628","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\/842628","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=842628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}