{"id":297812,"date":"2025-12-04T02:21:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T02:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/297812\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T02:21:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T02:21:12","slug":"naoya-inoue-lined-up-for-fight-everyone-wants-to-see-with-junto-nakatani-as-target-date-and-venue-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/297812\/","title":{"rendered":"Naoya Inoue lined up for fight everyone wants to see with Junto Nakatani as target date and venue revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most hotly anticipated fights in modern boxing, between Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani, is being lined up for next year.<\/p>\n

According to WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman, the Japanese superstars are set to meet in an undisputed super bantamweight title clash in May 2026 at the Tokyo Dome.<\/p>\n

\"Inoue<\/a><\/p>\n

2<\/p>\n

Inoue is set to defend his undisputed super bantamweight crown against NakataniCredit: Naoki Fukuda\/Top Rank<\/p>\n

The blockbuster bout hinges on Inoue and Nakatani winning their respective fights on the Ring V: Night of the Samurai card on December 27 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.<\/a><\/p>\n

Inoue<\/a> (31-0) headlines the event against Alan Picasso (32-0-1) in what will mark the fifth defence of his four 122lbs belts.<\/p>\n

‘The Monster’ previously overcame Murodjon Akhmadaliev, Ramon Cardenas, Ye Joon Kim, TJ Doheny and Luis Nery after achieving undisputed supremacy by flattening Marlon Tapales in December 2023.<\/p>\n

Further down the bill, Nakatani (31-0) is due to meet Sebastian Hernandez Reyes (20-0) in his first fight at super bantamweight after successfully unifying the WBC and IBF bantamweight titles against Ryosuke Nishida in June.<\/p>\n

READ MORE ON BOXING Junto Nakatani leaves rival’s eye completely closed as worrying injury stops fight in latest step towards Naoya Inoue clash<\/p>\n

Before that, the 27-year-old scooped WBO world titles<\/a> at flyweight and super flyweight and will be bidding to become a four-weight world champion next year.<\/p>\n

That feat has already been achieved by Inoue, who has won world titles at light flyweight, super flyweight, bantamweight and, now, super bantamweight.<\/p>\n

Inoue is also part of an elite group of two-weight undisputed world champions, having unified all four major sanctioning body belts at bantamweight previously.<\/p>\n

Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani agree to box<\/p>\n

Nakatani and Inoue verbally agreed to face each other during Japan’s annual awards in March.<\/a><\/p>\n

After being named the country’s best boxer for the seventh year running, Inoue called for a fight with Nakatani during his speech.<\/p>\n

“It turned out to be a special year,” he said. “I want to make this year even better<\/p>\n

\"Nakatani,<\/a><\/p>\n

2<\/p>\n

Nakatani is a three-weight world championCredit: Mikey Williams\/Top Rank<\/p>\n

“I want to do the best I can this year for the big domestic match that lots of fans and people around the sport have been talking about. <\/p>\n

“Mr Nakatani, a year later at Tokyo Dome, let’s lift the mood around Japanese boxing together.”<\/p>\n

Nakatani then joined Inoue on stage and replied: “Sure, let’s do it,” before the pair shook hands.<\/p>\n

“If we can come through this year strongly, I believe it will be the most exciting bouts between Japanese in the country’s boxing history,” Inoue added.<\/p>\n

Inoue is currently ranked No.3 in the Ring Magazine pound-for-pound rankings, while Nakatani is placed at No.7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most hotly anticipated fights in modern boxing, between Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani, is being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,6102,15283,9558,9552,101,56,54,55,70252,11555,15921],"class_list":["post-297812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-date","tag-junto-nakatani","tag-naoya-inoue","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-venue","tag-when","tag-where"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}