TOKYO – Japanese boxing star Junto Nakatani fractured his left eye socket and will concentrate on recovery for the foreseeable future following his epic bout with undisputed super bantamweight champion Naoya Inoue, a source close to him said Sunday.<\/p>\n
The two pound-for-pound elites fought out a classic at Tokyo Dome on Saturday that lived up to its billing as the biggest match in Japanese boxing history, won by Inoue in a unanimous decision for his record-extending 28th straight victory in world title bouts.<\/p>\n
“I have a bit of an injury, but I’ll heal it properly and fight again,” the 28-year-old Nakatani wrote on his Instagram. He had revealed after the bout that the injury was caused by an Inoue punch in the 11th round.<\/p>\n
It came a round after Nakatani, a three-division world title winner with an identical 32-0 career record to Inoue coming into the bout, suffered a cut above his left eye from an accidental head clash, with blood gushing from the wound.<\/p>\n
Still unbeaten in his perfect career, four-division champion Inoue reflected on the battle for the ages with satisfaction.<\/p>\n
“For now, I’m relieved. It feels as if I’ve finished off a big job,” said the 33-year-old, who won the first four rounds on all three judges’ scores to seize control. “I sensed I wouldn’t be dropped by Nakatani’s punches.”<\/p>\n
“I thought a win by only two points was harsh,” he added after one judge scored the bout 115-113, with the other two on 116-112. “But I need to develop a better sense (to bridge such gap) and take another look technically.”<\/p>\n
Inoue had the chance to settle the contest in the 11th round against a wounded Nakatani but claimed he “slightly” held himself back.<\/p>\n
“The desire wasn’t at 100 percent to really beat him up. It was a bit of mixed emotion, one that I felt for the first time,” said Inoue, who fought four bouts last year before preparing for the latest blockbuster.<\/p>\n
“I want to remove my mental damage properly. I don’t have much in the way of physical damage, but there’s been huge pressure up till this point.”<\/p>\n
His gym president Hideyuki Ohashi hinted Inoue’s next bout could even be next year, with a decision also to be made on which weight division he fights in.<\/p>\n
“I’ll make him take a proper rest. There could be one more bout to come this year, could be two,” he said. “I think he can certainly cut it in the featherweight division.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO – Japanese boxing star Junto Nakatani fractured his left eye socket and will concentrate on recovery for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-645333","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\/645333","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=645333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}