{"id":594200,"date":"2026-05-20T11:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T11:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/594200\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T11:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T11:14:11","slug":"nonito-donaire-sums-up-bam-rodriguezs-chances-of-becoming-the-first-man-to-beat-naoya-inoue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/594200\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonito Donaire sums up Bam Rodriguez’s chances of becoming the first man to beat Naoya Inoue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lower-division legend Nonito Donaire<\/a> has offered his take on a potential clash between Naoya Inoue<\/a> and Jesse Rodriguez<\/a>, believing that one man has the skills to emerge triumphant.<\/p>\n

Inoue made a seventh successful defence of his undisputed super-bantamweight crown earlier this month, unanimously outpointing three-weight world champion Junto Nakatani<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Their all-Japanese encounter delivered a somewhat cagey affair until Nakatani gained momentum between rounds eight and 10, where \u2018The Monster\u2019 suddenly seemed in a spot of bother.<\/p>\n

In response, though, Inoue managed to retain his four major titles with a strong finish to their contest, maintaining his status as a top two pound-for-pound star.<\/p>\n

Along with the 33-year-old, many regard Rodriguez as one of the sport\u2019s flagship operators, especially following his back-to-back stoppages over Phumelela Cafu and Fernando Martinez.<\/p>\n

Those two victories saw him unify the super-flyweight division last year, but now \u2018Bam\u2019 is bidding to become a three-weight world champion against Antonio Vargas.<\/p>\n

The pair will square off for Vargas\u2019 WBA bantamweight title on June 13<\/a>, with Rodriguez expected to complete this assignment before moving up to 122lbs.<\/p>\n

It should then become a question of when, rather than if, the 26-year-old collides with Inoue, who represents the naturally bigger and more experienced fighter.<\/p>\n

But despite these advantages, Donaire has told The Ring<\/a> that he believes Rodriguez has skills to defeat Inoue, who outpointed and stopped the Filipino in 2019 and 2022, respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes down to technical skills and the way Bam fights, he\u2019s definitely up there and can beat Inoue.<\/p>\n

\u201cBam has all of the skills, but being the smaller guy is going to be a big disadvantage to his style. The question becomes: is Bam big enough to utilise his dominance and his style? Because if you\u2019re the smaller guy, it\u2019s very difficult to do all of the things that he\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in terms of skills and capability, I think he beats both Inoue and Nakatani if they mix it up. He has the ability to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn, preliminary talks for a showdown between Inoue and \u2018Bam\u2019 have already taken place, with the pair expected to lock horns at the Tokyo Dome early next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lower-division legend Nonito Donaire has offered his take on a potential clash between Naoya Inoue and Jesse Rodriguez,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-594200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594200","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=594200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}