{"id":485430,"date":"2026-02-19T14:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/485430\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T14:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:05:07","slug":"naoya-inoue-motivated-for-first-time-in-a-while-as-he-confirms-nakatani-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/485430\/","title":{"rendered":"Naoya Inoue ‘motivated for first time in a while’ as he confirms Nakatani fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

After much anticipation, Naoya Inoue<\/a> has now confirmed that he will fight Junto Nakatani in a historic clash that will undoubtedly be the biggest in the history of Japanese boxing.<\/p>\n

A four-division world champion, Inoue has dominated the bantamweight and super-bantamweight ranks in recent years<\/a>, becoming one of three fighters to have claimed the undisputed title in multiple weight divisions during the four-belt era.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Nakatani has announced himself as another Japanese fighter that deserves a place in the pound-for-pound top 10, having followed in Inoue\u2019s footsteps and shadow to rule in three weight divisions and maintain a 32-fight undefeated record.<\/p>\n

Now, after both were successful on the December 27 bill in Riyadh<\/a>, Inoue has spoken out and revealed that the pair will indeed face one another, with their fight headed to the 57,000-capacity Tokyo Dome in Japan this May, as per Kyodo News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c[I will] be going head-to-head with Junto Nakatani at Tokyo Dome in May this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, \u2018The Monster\u2019 went on to admit that this fight will be the first which he has been \u2018highly motivated\u2019 for in a while, after a run of relatively humdrum title defences since getting his hands on the undisputed super-bantamweight throne in December 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m highly motivated for the first time in a while. I will train hard and I am looking forward to being in top shape for this fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Nakatani, nicknamed \u2018Big Bang\u2019, he hopes to pull off the upset and overtake Inoue as the face of Japanese boxing, but he acknowledged that he will be up against \u2018the best fighter in the world\u2019 when they collide in less than three months\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is the best fighter in the world, so I need to be in top condition to fight him.\u201d<\/p>\n

An official announcement is expected within the next couple of weeks, but Boxing News understands that the Japanese duo will collide on Saturday, May 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After much anticipation, Naoya Inoue has now confirmed that he will fight Junto Nakatani in a historic clash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-485430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485430","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=485430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}