Inoue KOs Tapales in 10th round to become undisputed 122 champion

'The Monster' is 2nd man to fully unify 2 divisions in 4-belt era

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Naoya Inoue is an undisputed world champion. Again.

The Japanese pound-for-pound star knocked out Marlon Tapales in the 10th round of a hard-fought, but one-sided bout, to retain the WBC and WBO belts for the first time and win the IBF and WBA 122-pound titles to become the first-ever undisputed junior featherweight champion of the three- or four-belt era on Tuesday at Ariake Arena in Tokyo.

“The Monster” also became the second man to become an undisputed champion in two divisions in the four-belt era, joining Terence Crawford, who did it at welterweight in July by knocking out Errol Spence Jr. after having also fully unified the junior welterweight division in 2017.

Inoue’s march to doing it in two divisions was remarkably quick, just 378 days between undisputed coronations.

Last Dec. 13, he dominated and knocked out Paul Butler in the 11th round, also at Ariake Arena, to unify the four bantamweight titles before moving up to junior featherweight, where he — you guessed it — dominated and knocked out Stephen Fulton in the eighth round to take his two belts on July 25.

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