Naoya Inoue Is The Best And Most Skilled Fighter In Boxing...

[satiev1]

Seriously. He's absolutely elite across the board.

Elite He is but not the best or most skilled. And horrible opposition

[madsweeney]

Nope, hes not American so he's obviously using PEDS and a no skill bum.

[madsweeney]

A little data to inform the discussion.

Inoue is 25-0, 20 wins in title fights. 18 stoppages across those fights (90%). 48% of his fights have been against champs, and 80% have been title fights. 4 division champ across 5 divisions, undisputed and unified.
He has fought 12 champions (counting Donaire twice) and an additional IBO champ who I’m not counting. 56 title defenses among those champs.

Ryoichi Taguchi (unified light flyweight world champ) WBA, IBF, Ring. Inoue gave him his second loss, and Taguchi still went up to win and defend world titles after, going 9-2-1 after fighting Inoue. 18-1-1 at time of fight. One defense. (Ring ranked #9, Inoue unranked at the time)

Adrian Hernandez two time light flyweight world champ. 4 defenses in his second title reign before being stopped by Inoue. 29-2-1, 5 total defenses. Ring Ranked #4 (Inoue was #9 at the time)

Omar Narvaez: two division world champion. 43-1-2, 27 defenses across those reigns.( #1 ranked, Inoue unranked in the division)

Kohei Kono: 2 time world champion, 32-9-1, 3 defenses. (#7 ranked)

Jamie McDonnell: IBF bantamweight, WBA regular bantamweight champion, 29-2-1, 6 defenses. #1 ranked in 2016, #2 at time of fight

Juan Carlos Payano: WBA and IBO champion, 20-1, one defense. #4 ranked

Emmanuel Rodriguez: IBF champion, 19-0, one defense, with wins over 2 other champs on this list. #3 ranked

Donaire (twice). Shouldn’t need to go into Donaire’s bonafides, but he reached #3 P4P by Ring, FOY 2012, 4 division world champion, has held 9 world titles, and titles in 3 consecutive decades, along with only Holyfield, Pacman, BHop, Morales, and Floyd. 40-5 at time of first fight, 42-6, 10 defenses across his many reigns. #4 ranked at time of first fight. Then beat Oubaali, who was #2 ranked, and was #1 ranked at time of second fight)

Jason Moloney: Current WBO bantamweight champ. 21-1 #6 ranked

Paul Butler. WBO champ, but no defenses. Email champ. 34-2.

Stephen Fulton: was unified WBC/WBO superbantam champ, 21-0, 2 defenses, both against world champions. #1 ranked

Combined record of his champion opponents at time of fight: 348-30-6. 90.6% wins.



Bud Crawford is currently 40-0. 17 wins in 17 title fights, 14 stoppages across those fights (82.4%). 25% of his fights have been against champs, and 42.5% have been title fights. 3 division champion, and undisputed in two divisions.

10 champs beaten, 31 defenses between them.

Ricky Burns: 3 division world champion. 36-2-1 at time of fight. 8 defenses.
Yuriorkis Gamboa: unified featherweight champion, 23-0, 5 defenses.
Ray Beltran, 29-6-1: 0 defenses.
Vik Postol, 28-0: 0 defenses
Julius Indongo unified light welter, 22-0: 1 defense
Jeff Horn, 18-0-1 - 1 defense
Amir Khan - unified light welterweight champ. 33-4. 5 defenses
Kell Brook 39-2 - 3 defenses
Shawn Porter- 2 time world champ, 31-3-1: 2 defenses.
Errol Spence Jr - unified world champ, 28-0, 6 defenses.

Combined record of his opponents at time of fight: 287-17-4. 93.2% wins.

I'm personally leading towards Bud being #1 at the moment, but he's at the tail end of his career, and Inoue is still in his prime, and has room to make more statements. They're both impressive as heck, and at the very least I think we can all agree they're the top 2. I think Bud has slightly better wins, but Inoue has faced consistently high level competition, taking on a future world champ in his 4th fight, and winning a world title in his 6th fight, and he's only at 25 fights. We'll see what his career looks like if he gets to 40 fights.

Someone did their homework, respect.

I agree hes not "the best and most skilled" but he has time to prove it and easily in the top 5 of active fighters. We'll see how far he can go and adaptions he makes.

[crimsonfalcon07]

Someone did their homework, respect.

I don't really like the notion of putting down the accomplishments of one guy to raise the other guy up. They're both great fighters, and IMO the best in the world by a wide margin. I suppose comparisons are inevitable, but IMO it's better to discuss from data and skills, rather than unsubstantiated and wrong personal biases.

I figured it would be good to put together a side by side so people can get a better look at what these two great fighters have done.

It's easy to discredit an accomplishment. But I would wager that everyone doing so is doing so because of their own personal jealousy and deficiencies.

Take the Moloney brothers for example. They're both tough, with a good tight high guard and head movement, good footwork, and informed punch selection. What if they were 147+? Would they still get dismissed as trash with their skills? And they're not even top tier at the lower weights.

Another thing I was looking into recently was how many fighters took on the consensus best guy in their divisional debut when they moved up in weight, and did so consistently, without taking tuneups. That list includes notables like Hearns, both Sugar Ray's, Duran, etc. There's only 54 three division champs, and only 22 four division champs, so the company is pretty sparse. There's quite a few of the ATGs who did take on the top competition, but many of them took L's from doing so.

The amount of hate Inoue gets is crazy. Like, people like to point to the first Donaire fight and say he sucks because Donaire is old. How many people have been able to win world titles at Donaire's age? Donaire is one of only 6 boxers ever to win world titles in 3 consecutive decades. It's not like he's a scrub. And none of those people bother to give Inoue credit for fighting 10 rounds, dropping his guy, and winning, with a broken orbital. None give him credit for making every fight look the same, no matter what style of fighter he's facing. We give credit when a fighter can fight going forward, going backwards, etc. But what about a fighter that can make you play his game no matter what your game plan was? He's faced tough come forward types, slick movers and tricky out boxers, hard hitting counter fighters, and virtually every fight has looked like an Inoue fight.

Point is, we can talk Inoue up without putting Bud down, and vice versa. And IMO it's better to do so with real facts.

[Boxfan83]

This guy would be a huge star had his career started at 135

h3ll I'd say as light as 126, and he'd be good to go

< 126 is just tiny

122 is ok. The reason I dont like fights below 122 is a majority tend to end controversial, they throw over 1,000 punches and come out looking like they went for a long ass run. Ionue is an exception though.

[hugh grant]

That’s very specific man, it’s like saying could Inoue dominate an elite fighter at age 35 like Bud has just done. It’s not really relevant to who’s been more dominant.

I think both have been incredibly dominant against quality opposition, I think the OP saying Inoue has been far more dominant is crazy.

It's just you said inou e struggled with donaire who's 36 years of age so can't be better than bud? And I replied inoue had less than 18 fights before fighting a former pf p ranked fighter who was bigger. Was bud fighting guys this good in buds 18th fight?

[crimsonfalcon07]

122 is ok. The reason I dont like fights below 122 is a majority tend to end controversial, they throw over 1,000 punches and come out looking like they went for a long ass run. Ionue is an exception though.

The majority absolutely do not end in controversy any more than any other weight class. The last time someone did research on this, they found that although there tend to be slightly more KO's at heavier weight classes, it's not significant. In fact, there were just as many stoppages by percentage of fights at 115 as at 147, and even more at 112 than at 126, 130, 135, 140, 147, 154, and 175.

The only true part of your statement is that you don't like the lower weight divisions.

[RJJ-94-02=GOAT]

It's just you said inou e struggled with donaire who's 36 years of age so can't be better than bud? And I replied inoue had less than 18 fights before fighting a former pf p ranked fighter who was bigger. Was bud fighting guys this good in buds 18th fight?

No I said he struggled with Donaire so he’s not “far more dominant” than Bud like the OP suggested.

[BenjaminLinus]

Inoue > Bud

[IceTrayDaGang]

Nope, hes not American so he's obviously using PEDS and a no skill bum.

funny since american fighters are the ones getting popped using peds the most!