{"id":372496,"date":"2025-12-28T06:23:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T06:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/372496\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T06:23:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T06:23:14","slug":"naoya-inoue-reacts-to-extremely-disappointing-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/372496\/","title":{"rendered":"Naoya Inoue Reacts To \u2018Extremely Disappointing\u2019 Win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Naoya Inoue may have done enough to remain undefeated and solidify his spot as boxing\u2019s pound-for-pound best earlier today (Sat., Dec. 27, 2025) in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/boxing\/411991\/highlights-naoya-inoue-forced-to-re-wrap-hands-pre-fight-still-closes-out-2025-in-dominant-fashion-the-ring-v\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">title defense against David Picasso<\/a> at The Ring V: \u201cNight of the Samurai\u201d in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but \u201cMonster\u201d is not happy with his own performance and ultimately believes it\u2019s because he lost focus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Saturday\u2019s masterclass performance by Inoue appeared to be par for the course, but the undisputed super bantamweight champion simply wasn\u2019t able to find a home for a finish. Picasso sports some pretty solid defense, but Inoue had won 27 out of his 31 professional fights via knockout heading into this weekend. He expected to be able to do enough over 12 rounds to find the knockout blow and become the first person to stop Picasso (even though he become the first person to hand him a loss).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Inoue, who is on the short list of pound-for-pound greats competing in boxing right now, still looked incredibly dominant and did enough to lock down a massive superfight with fellow Japanese superstar Junto Nakatani sometime next year. However, that doesn\u2019t soften the blow for Inoue, who was hoping for a knockout finish this weekend to close out 2025 in dramatic fashion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cTo be honest, it\u2019s regrettable,\u201d said Inoue during Saturday\u2019s post-fight press conference (shown in the above video player). \u201cNot meeting those expectations is extremely disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cHonestly, I really wanted to KO him. I think Picasso\u2019s defense was just too good. That\u2019s what it comes down to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cRather than talking about boxing today, I feel my concentration wasn\u2019t there. Yeah, I wasn\u2019t in sync with myself. That was the issue. I think I lost focus.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Stick with Mania for more \u2018Inoue vs. Picasso\u2019 results, coverage, and highlights.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/boxing\/411991\/highlights-naoya-inoue-forced-to-re-wrap-hands-pre-fight-still-closes-out-2025-in-dominant-fashion-the-ring-v#comments\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naoya Inoue may have done enough to remain undefeated and solidify his spot as boxing\u2019s pound-for-pound best earlier&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[36109,49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-372496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-boxing-news-results","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}