{"id":545594,"date":"2026-04-23T00:43:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T00:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/545594\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T00:43:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T00:43:07","slug":"naoya-inoue-facing-undefeated-us-star-now-inevitable-one-of-the-biggest-fights-in-boxing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/545594\/","title":{"rendered":"Naoya Inoue facing undefeated US star now ‘inevitable’: “One of the biggest fights in boxing”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eddie Hearn has named one fight that he feels is \u201cinevitable\u201d for Naoya Inoue<\/a>, who must first defend his undisputed super-bantamweight crown against Junto Nakatani.<\/p>\n

Their all-Japanese dustup will take place at the Tokyo Dome on May 2, with a full-capacity crowd of 55,000 expected to be in attendance.<\/p>\n

Such is the level of intrigue attached to their encounter, which many believe represents the toughest test of Inoue\u2019s career thus far.<\/p>\n

Up to this point, \u2018The Monster\u2019 has won the majority of his fights in one-sided fashion, while nonetheless becoming a two-division undisputed champion.<\/p>\n

He did, of course, suffer knockdowns against Luis Nery and Ramon Cardenas, but ultimately climbed off the canvas to win both fights by stoppage.<\/p>\n

Even in his first encounter with Nonito Donaire<\/a>, in 2019, Inoue showed tremendous guts and guile to eventually grind out a unanimous decision victory.<\/p>\n

Against Nakatani, the 33-year-old may be compelled to overcome similar spells of adversity, but is heavily favoured to retain his four major titles at 122lbs.<\/p>\n

Hoping to eventually face the Japanese star, meanwhile, is Jesse Rodriguez, who bids to become a three-division world champion against WBA bantamweight titlist Antonio Vargas<\/a> on June 13.<\/p>\n

Should \u2018Bam\u2019 emerge triumphant, then Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn will likely extend his talks with Turki Alalshikh for a potential Inoue fight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere [have] been some early preliminary conversations with [Alalshikh] about Inoue against \u2018Bam\u2019, and I do think that fight is inevitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be necessarily straight after the Vargas fight, but it could be in the next two or three fights.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably one of the biggest fights in boxing. It\u2019s one that \u2018Bam\u2019 likes the idea of.\u201d<\/p>\n

While moving up to 118lbs for his next outing, Rodruguez remains the unified world super-flyweight champion and could therefore chase an undisputed clash with the winner of Willibaldo Garcia vs Andrew Moloney, which takes place on June 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eddie Hearn has named one fight that he feels is \u201cinevitable\u201d for Naoya Inoue, who must first defend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-545594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545594","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=545594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}