Inoue to defend undisputed crown vs. Nery in Japanese mega fight
Loaded card will also feature 3 additional world title bouts
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Undisputed junior featherweight champion Naoya Inoue, the 2023 consensus fighter of the year, will begin his 2024 campaign against WBC mandatory challenger Luis Nery.
They have had a signed deal for some time, but Ohashi Promotions, which co-promotes Inoue with Top Rank, formally announced the bout at a news conference on Wednesday in Tokyo, where the fight will take place on May 6 (ESPN+ in the U.S., 4 a.m. ET) on top of a loaded card that will also include three other world title bouts at the 55,000-seat Tokyo Dome.
The fight figures to be one of the biggest in Japanese history as it will take place in same stadium where Buster Douglas scored his iconic upset knockout of Mike Tyson to win the undisputed heavyweight championship in 1990.
“Naoya Inoue is the world’s best fighter, a young man who amazes me every time he steps in the ring,” said Top Rank chairman Bob Arum, Inoue’s co-promoter. “Luis Nery is a tough challenger, but I fully expect Inoue to get the job done in front of more than 50,000 fans at the Tokyo Dome.”
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Inoue (26-0, 23 KOs), 30, Japan’s biggest boxing star, will be making his second 122-pound title defense and first of the undisputed crown. In his last fight, on Dec. 26, he 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 122-pound champion of the three- or four-belt era at Ariake Arena in Tokyo.
Inoue, who has won titles in four divisions, also joined Terence Crawford as the only male boxer to become an undisputed champion in two divisions in the four-belt era. Inoue unified the bantamweight division to become undisputed champion in 2022.
“It is my great pleasure to fight the strongest challenger, Luis Nery, on such a gigantic show at the Tokyo Dome,” Inoue said through an interpreter. “Nery is a hard-punching, aggressive and durable boxer, so I wish to train hard to defeat this tough opponent.
“I am more motivated for this fight than any in my career since I see Nery as a very dangerous challenger. I wish to be victorious with Nery doing nothing against me.”
At its annual convention last fall, the WBC ordered the Inoue-Tapales winner to make a mandatory defense in their next fight against Nery (35-1, 27 KOs), 29, a Mexican southpaw.
Nery, a former WBC bantamweight and junior featherweight titlist, became Inoue’s WBC mandatory challenger last February when he stopped Azat Hovhannisyan in the 11th round of an epic battle in a title eliminator that was the 2023 Fight Freaks Unite fight of the year.
Nery is infamous in Japan because of his past exploits there, which resulted in an indefinite suspension from the Japanese Boxing Commission.
While the fight with Inoue has been signed, the remaining hurdle was cleared last week when Nery’s suspension was lifted, which was expected.
The suspension stemmed from his missing weight — something taken extremely seriously in Japan — for a rematch with Shinsuke Yamanaka, which Nery won by second-round knockout in March 2018 to retain the WBC bantamweight title.
Nery won the title in their first encounter in August 2017, when he knocked out Yamanaka in the fourth round but failed a Voluntary Anti-Doping Association-administered drug test as part of the WBC’s Clean Boxing Program in a sample provided before the fight but whose results were not known until after the bout.
Nery claimed the positive test was from tainted beef in Mexico — a common problem there — and after investigating the matter, the WBC issued a ruling in which it said that it believed that the positive test result was indeed a result of food contamination. While the WBC did not strip Nery of the title it ordered him to give Yamanaka a rematch.
“I would like to apologize for my previous mistake in not making weight against Shinsuke Yamanaka in 2018,” Nery said at the news conference. “This is such a great opportunity to fight ‘Monster’ Inoue. I wish to show my strength and win the belts from him. Naoya is a very fast, talented and strong champion. But I have no fear.
“I’m also greatly motivated to fight him. It’s my honor to exchange gloves with such a great champion as Inoue. It will be a good fight. I’ll show my best performance and will show I’m one of the best Mexican boxers in history.”
Nery has won four fights in a row since his lone defeat, a seventh-round knockout to Brandon Figueroa in a WBC/WBA junior featherweight unification fight in May 2021.
3 more world title fights
In the other world title fights on the card:
Takuma Inoue (19-1, 5 KOs), Naoya’s brother, 28, will defend the WBA bantamweight title for the second time against Japanese countryman and mandatory challenger Sho Ishida (34-3, 17 KOs), 32, who lost a decision to then-junior bantamweight titlist Kal Yafai in Cardiff, Wales, in 2017 in his only other world title bout.
Inoue made his first defense on Feb. 24 and knocked out former junior bantamweight titlist Jerwin Ancajas in the ninth round.
Australia’s Jason Moloney (27-2, 19 KOs), 33, will make his second WBO bantamweight title defense against former kickboxing champion Yoshiki Takei (8-0, 8 KOs), 27, a Japanese southpaw.
Moloney made his first defense via majority decision against Saul Sanchez on Jan. 13 on the Artur Beterbiev-Callum Smith undercard in Quebec City, Canada. Takei was 23-2 with 16 knockouts as a kickboxer and held a K-1 title for nearly three years.
“I’ve always wanted to fight in Japan, and to do it on this huge show in front of a sold-out crowd at the Tokyo Dome is what dreams are made of,” said Moloney, who was originally slated to defend May 11 on the Vasiliy Lomachenko-George Kambosos Jr. undercard in Perth, Australia. “I want to be known as a throwback world champion. I won my title in America, defended it in Canada, and now I’m willing to go into enemy territory and defend my title in Japan against the undefeated Yoshiki Takei. I know the Japanese fans will enjoy this fight, and I look forward to making some new fans in Japan and all over the world.”
Also, WBA flyweight titlist Seigo Yuri Akui (19-2-1, 11 KOs), 28, of Japan, will make his first defense in a rematch against Japanese countryman Taku Kuwahara (13-1, 8 KOs), 28. Akui stopped Kuwahara in the 10th and final round of a Japanese flyweight title fight in 2021.
Akui won the 112-pound world title by unanimous decision from long-reigning titleholder Artem Dalakian on Jan. 23 in Osaka, Japan.
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This is going to be a great card inoue nery will be a great fight