{"id":807788,"date":"2026-10-19T17:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T17:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807788\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T17:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T17:58:08","slug":"naoya-inoue-offered-world-title-shot-in-new-division-as-bam-rodriguez-talks-falter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807788\/","title":{"rendered":"Naoya Inoue offered world title shot in new division as ‘Bam’ Rodriguez talks falter"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Naoya Inoue<\/a> teasing a move up to 126lbs, he may favour an immediate world title shot over his potential mega fight with Jesse Rodriguez.<\/p>\n

The Japanese star is looking to return in February or March of next year, having not fought since his unanimous decision triumph over Junto Nakatani<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Back then, in May, Inoue retained his undisputed super-bantamweight crown with arguably a career-best victory, before insisting that he would not fight for the remainder of this year.<\/p>\n

Instead, his plan was to prepare for a 2027 showdown against Rodriguez, who dethroned Antonio Vargas with a sixth-round knockout for the WBA bantamweight title in June.<\/p>\n

In doing so, \u2018Bam\u2019 became a three-division world champion and could enter a unification match with WBO belt-holder Christian Medina later this year.<\/p>\n

The idea would then be to face Inoue at 122lbs, yet it seems the 33-year-old is growing increasingly impatient<\/a> and could move up to featherweight sooner than later.<\/p>\n

If he chooses to do so, then the \u2018Monster\u2019 may have the chance to become a five-division world champion against Bruce Carrington, who has told FightHype<\/a> that he would gladly defend his WBC title against the modern great.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to fight Inoue. He\u2019s one of the greats in boxing right now and one of the best pound-for-pound boxers \u2013 why would I not [want to fight him]?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s talking about coming up to featherweight, so why not get it on with me?\u201d<\/p>\n

As an unbeaten champion, Carrington is coming off a successful first title defence in July, when he unanimously outpointed Mexican challenger Rene Palacios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Naoya Inoue teasing a move up to 126lbs, he may favour an immediate world title shot over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-807788","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\/807788","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=807788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}