“The Monster” is Quietly Running Boxing

Naoya Inoue knocked out Luis Nery in the super bantamweight championship to stay undefeated with a record of 27-0 (24 KOs) on Sunday, May 5. Retaining the championship was big for Inoue; however, in this fight, Inoue got knocked down for the first time in his entire 27-fight, 12-year career. Despite Inoue’s incredible accomplishments throughout his career and his current status as ESPN’s third-best pound-for-pound fighter, Inoue is rather unknown.

Naoya Inoue was born in Kanagawa, Japan, in 1993. Inoue’s father, Shingo Inoue, was an amateur boxer and had trained Inoue from a young age. Inoue had a lot of success in his amateur career, winning multiple tournaments as an amateur and ending his amateur career with a record of 75-6 (48 KOs). While Inoue experienced all of this success in his amateur career, he was not very tall. By the time he went pro in 2012, he was only 5’5”. 

Inoue decided to begin fighting professionally in the light flyweight division at 108 pounds, and off the bat, he fought in many difficult bouts. His first fights were against Filipino national champion Crison Omayao, Thai national champion Ngaoprajan Chuwatana, Japanese number-one-ranked fighter Yuki Sano, and Japanese light flyweight champion Ryoichi Taguchi. Eventually, Inoue would take down Mexican boxer Adrian Hernandez to win his first championship at the WBC light flyweight championship. Inoue decided to move up a weight class to junior bantamweight at 115 pounds to challenge Omar Andres Navarez for the WBO title. He easily took care of Navarez to win the title, and over the next four years, he defended his world championship seven times. However, two weight world championships were not enough. Inoue moved up to bantamweight at 118 pounds to challenge Jamie McDonnell for the WBA title. He would TKO McDonnell early to win his third championship and go on to win the IBO title against Michael Dasmarinas, the WBC championship against Nonito Donaire, and the WBO championship against Paul Butler. With that, Inoue became the first-ever Japanese boxer to win an undisputed title and the first boxer to win an undisputed title with all four wins coming by knockout. However, this third weight championship was still not enough for Inoue, so he decided to move up to junior featherweight at 122 pounds and fight unified champion Stephen Fulton. He would once again win by TKO to become a four-weight champion, and after a KO against Marlon Tapales, he would become the undisputed champion of the junior featherweight division. He would then defend and retain his championship with a KO against Nery.

Despite being only the second male boxer to be a two-weight undisputed champion, and having many more accomplishments beyond these championships, Inoue is rather unknown outside of the boxing world. Currently, names like Gervonta Davis, Canelo Alvarez, and Tyson Fury are the big names in boxing, despite all being lower on the pound-for-pound rankings than Inoue. One major reason for this is the weight class that Inoue fights in. The majority of the most notable boxers of all time and even of the modern generation fight at higher weight classes because people find the higher weight classes more entertaining as there are more knockouts. Furthermore, even the boxers who were considered “small” in relation to more famed boxers were bigger than Inoue. Manny Pacquiao, whom many consider to be the best “small” fighter of all time, fought in junior featherweight as his lightest weight class, whereas it is the heaviest classification that Inoue has ever fought in. Another major reason Inoue is less well-known is that he is Japanese and chooses to fight mostly in Japan, making his fights very inaccessible to much of the international fighting audience. As a result of fighting in Asia, the time zone difference makes it so a Sunday night bout, like the one against Nery, is actually on Monday morning for people in the U.S. and Europe, making them less popular to watch. Lastly, many people discredit Inoue’s success by classifying his opponents as “weak.” Because Inoue fights at a lower weight with less notable fighters, many say that he is not as good as he seems because the fighters he goes against are worse than the ones in higher weight classes. This comes from a comparison between Inoue and Pacquiao, as the latter began fighting in a lighter weight class but dramatically gained weight to win the heavier divisions as well. 

Despite these criticisms of Inoue, many boxers acknowledge his skill and greatness. Gervonta Davis described him as incredibly technical, and not just a good puncher, but a good boxer. On a podcast, boxing legend Mike Tyson described him as “vicious” and “a mean son of a [EXPLETIVE].” Despite all of these discussions around how good Inoue actually is, Inoue doesn’t feel any pressure to “prove himself.” He describes wanting to fight because he enjoys it and states that he wouldn’t rise through divisions for the money or to prove himself but would do it if he wanted to.