Comments Thread For: As Naoya Inoue pushes himself to the brink, fans continue to push harder

[NihonJim]

I'll tell you one thing as someone who lived and worked in Japan for 2 years, Inoue and his team are not going to care about the opinions of any fans or media outside Japan.

Japan is probably the only country in the world that is more insular than the USA.

[DeeMoney]

I agree with the sentiment of many here, the constant call for a fighter to move up in weight is annoying and misrepresentative of greatness.

If a given fighters best weight is 147, then I'd rather see them fight at 147 and be the greatest version of themselves. Why move to a different weight where they arent as good just so we can see them be in closer matches (and possibly fail). Its akin to asking Lebron James to wear ankle weights during a game to make things more interesting and prove if he really is great.

I think a lot of this stems from so many boxing fans refusing to accept athleticism as an important aspect of boxing success. We want to believe that its all skill, toughness, and thinking out there. So a good fighter should be able to just out skill, tough, and think an opponent regardless of weight class. This is fallacious

[boxingitis]

TJ Doheny, Sam Goodman, Ye Joon Kim.

Yeah, he’s really been pushing himself to the brink lately.

He clean the division 118 already by beating all the top guy. Once a division is "cleaned up", logically there wont be any better opponents.

[kafkod]

Super-Middleweight division wasn’t really around like that or popular until Hagler was pretty much old or retired.

Difference was Hagler fought ATG’s and hall of famers. Golovkin said he’d fight 168 pounders and never did once. In todays game it’s much easier to make a move up in weight where there’s 4 weight classes. Golovkin’s team ducked and dodged fights with high risk fighters but kept complaining nobody would fight him.

With Inoue it’s a bit different. I think people just want to see him against great fighters. If you’re wiping out everyone in your weight class.. naturally fans are going to want you to move up, until you find challenges. And I’m not talking about Tank Davis.

GGG fought everybody at 160 who was willing to fight him. It's stupid to criticise him for not moving up to 168 when there were bigger fights in his own division.

[Roadblock]

Inoue is a special talent & my p4p.
But there are far to many weight classes lower down separated by lees than a 2L bottle of water, It's ridiculous.

The thing is the amount of muscle in a small highly trained athlete that will hold that 2ltr of water is a lot. conditioning today is an artform that is very scientific, its like a few degrees on an airfoil makes a lot of difference to a F1 car , elite fighters are every bit a F1 car.

[BustedKnuckles]

The thing is the amount of muscle in a small highly trained athlete that will hold that 2ltr of water is a lot. conditioning today is an artform that is very scientific, its like a few degrees on an airfoil makes a lot of difference to a F1 car , elite fighters are every bit a F1 car.

I get that side too, but I bet a ot of those small guys are about the same size. Just a thought, not necessarily a fact. I'd expect guys in any three consecutive classes to weigh basically the same outside of training.

If you're going to make it scientific, then make each division 10% more than the lower division. Then the moves will always be equal, not by arbitrary pounds, but by percentage of weight.

[DeeMoney]

I get that side too, but I bet a ot of those small guys are about the same size. Just a thought, not necessarily a fact. I'd expect guys in any three consecutive classes to weigh basically the same outside of training.

If you're going to make it scientific, then make each division 10% more than the lower division. Then the moves will always be equal, not by arbitrary pounds, but by percentage of weight.

It kind of works out as a pct if you start at a little higher weight.

Start with Lightweight (135) go up 9% you get just over 147- welterweight. Take that 147, go up 9%, you get a smidge over 160, middleweight. Take that 160 and increase 9% you get just shy of 174.5, so we round it up to 175-Light Heavyweight.

Heck, even a 9% increase from 175 would get you darn near 190; the original cruiserweight and where I think it should be. But you are correct, the lighterweights do bunch up a bit in regards to weight class spacing

[topo5358]

I don't believe a fight with Nakatani will be at a higher weight because Nakatani will have to come up in weight to get to Inoue's weight class. I think Nakatani holds one of the bantamweight titles Inoue gave up to go to junior featherweight.

[elfag]

Amen. Look at how people criticize Golovkin for staying at middleweight taking on all comers. The same would have happened to Hagler. Boxing fans don't understand the concept of weight classes. Combat sports fans seem to be the worst about actually understanding the rules of the sport they're supposedly fans of. Baseball, football, soccer fans etc know the rules of their sports. But boxing fans regularly spout the same incorrect drivel about how a blow wasn't low because it was on the beltline, even though the beltline has nothing to do with the definition of a low blow, or the old misunderstood saw about how you have to take the belts from a champ by beating him clearly (as if Sugar Ray didn't win over the aforementioned Hagler on the strength of a controversial split decision), when that saying means nothing more than the champ retains in the event of a tie. Even the great Roy Jones Jr gets that one wrong. I'm not sure what it is about our sport that brings out all the people who can't be bothered to learn the rules, but nonetheless want to loudly hold court on their incorrect opinions, but I do hope that throwback fighters like Inoue, who is reputed to have signed a contract to never take an easy fight, don't suffer from the ******ity of the fans.

the beltline has a LOT to do with the definition of a low blow. At the beginning of every fight the ref will show relative to the belt line what is good and most cases on the belt line is legal.

perhaps YOU should study the sport more

[TheProudLunatic]

The brink of what