Naoya Inoue outshines Junto Nakatani in Tokyo showdown to keep super-bantamweight title
Naoya Inoue retained his four world champion belts and kept his perfect record alive in Saturday’s fight at the Tokyo Dome. Photograph: Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP/Getty Images Naoya Inoue successfully defended his undisputed super-bantamweight championship with a close but uncontroversial 12-round unanimous decision over Junto Nakatani in their eagerly anticipated showdown at the Tokyo Dome on Saturday night. Before a sellout crowd of about 55,000 spectators during Japan’s Golden Week holiday, Inoue held off a fierce late surge from his unbeaten rival to win by scores of 116-112, 116-112 and 115-113 and retain the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO belts at 122lb, extending his perfect record in what had been billed as the biggest fight in Japanese boxing history .
(The Guardian had it 115-113 for Inoue. ) Related: Naoya Inoue retains undisputed super-bantamweight title v Junto Nakatani – as it happened The four-division world champion nicknamed the Monster had spoken during fight week about wanting to “prove that I’m still Naoya Inoue”, perhaps a nod to the whispers of his purported decline. But the 33-year-old showed why he remains one of the world’s best fighters regardless of weight – if not the outright pound-for-pound king – by getting the better of a taller, longer, younger challenger seen as his most dangerous opponent in years.
“I’m 33 now and I was fighting against a Japanese fighter who’s coming up in the pound-for-pound rankings, so I was determined not to lose,” Inoue said afterwards. “It was different to the fights I’ve had before, with the pressure. So I’m relieved that I won.
” From the opening bell, the magnitude of the occasion seemed to settle over the arena. The vast dome fell under an almost complete silence in the first round, the crowd absorbed by both fighters as they took one another’s measure. Inoue was the first to impose himself, edging forward behind a sharp jab that allowed him to slip inside and disrupt Nakatani’s rhythm.
The challenger spent much of the round on the back foot, briefly thrown off balance at one point. While few punches landed cleanly, the early initiative belonged to the champion. That pattern held through the opening frames.
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