Naoya Inoue: record, next fight and profile →
Inoue, Tapales Fight Photos Gallery - WBC/WBO junior featherweight world champion Naoya "The Monster" Inoue (26-0, 23 KOs) made history again. The Japanese pound-for-pound superstar knocked out Filipino IBF/WBA champion Marlon Tapales in round 10 to capture the undisputed junior featherweight championship Tuesday at Ariake Arena in Tokyo. (photos by Naoki Fukuda and Wendell Alinea)
Naoya Inoue probably won’t be back in the ring until May. By then, he will have passed the ten-year anniversary of his first major title win, a knockout of Adrian Hernandez for the WBC light flyweight belt.
Naoya Inoue built up a 24-5 power punches landed advantage over the first three rounds. Marlon Tapales came alive in the fourth round, where he threw 53 punches, his fight high. Unfortunately for him, Inoue knocked him down at the end of the round.
The victory lap will be brief. Naoya Inoue has already begun plans for his next fight, a conversation that already took place in the background ahead of his latest fight. The four-division champion became a freshly crowned undisputed king after a tenth-round knockout of WBA/IBF titlist Marlon Tapales to fully unify the 122-pound division. Inoue held the WBC and WBO belts headed into the Lemino/ESPN+ main event from Ariake Arena in Tokyo.
Naoya Inoue has created history. Again. The four-division titlist and high-ranking pound-for-pound earned his second undisputed championship in just more than a year after an eleventh-round knockout of the Philippines’ Marlon Tapales. Inoue scored two knockdowns, the latter which produced the full ten count at 1:02 of round ten to fully unify the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO junior featherweight titles Tuesday evening at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan.
In 1976, the WBC brought back a division that only briefly and without much fanfare flared on the boxing scene in the early 1920s. In the space between bantamweight and featherweight, a class few likely were asking for became one of the most indispensable of the last half century.
There is no intention to merely give it a go or dare to be great. Marlon Tapales is here to shock the world. That is the message that has been sent from the moment the 31-year-old Filipino southpaw set his sights on Naoya
Naoya Inoue has become familiar with making history for his native Japan. A supreme skillset—arguably the most talented fighter in the sport—has greatly enabled his pound-for-pound rise. Inoue freely admits, however, the recent run he’s enjoyed to repeatedly etch his name into the record books has come with its fair share of luck.
Former junior featherweight champion Murodjon Akhmadaliev desperately wants to rectify the lone loss of his career by taking on the winner of the upcoming undisputed 122-pound championship between Naoya Inoue and Marlon Tapales.
Marlon Tapales has insisted to anyone who will listen that he is not done with his upset tour. The reigning WBA/IBF junior featherweight titlist has arrived in Tokyo for the biggest challenge of his fifteen-year pro career. Looming ahead for the 31-year-old Filipino southpaw is an undisputed championship clash versus four-division and current WBC/WBO 122-pound champ Naoya Inoue, widely regarded among the sport’s very best pound-for-pound fighters.