Hail to the little guys !
Tomorrow morning (UK time) sees a major fight take place in Tokyo, Japan with the much anticipated meeting between unified ‘world’ junior featherweight champion Stephen Fulton (21-0, 8 KO’s) and Japan’s three-weight ‘world’ champion Naoya Inoue (24-0, 21 KO’s). It promises much.
The Japanese is attempting to gain a ‘world’ title in a fourth weight class and build on his ‘pound-for-pound’ status, currently at #2 in the prestigious The Ring magazine rankings. Fulton, from Philadelphia, USA is an undefeated champion who looks the ‘real deal’ having recently unified the WBC and WBO world title straps.
In a bumper fight week it is arguably the second biggest event and one of the biggest fights to be made currently in the sport. The weekend’s Spence Jr. v Crawford welterweight unification takes top billing in the week. More will follow in our ‘Friday Faceup’ post.
As for tomorrow; the 122lbs (8st, 10lbs) title is up for grabs. It pits the adaptable champion Fulton, who’s good at infighting and also boxing off his jab at range. The ‘Monster’ Inoue is a concussive KO merchant who’s carried his power whilst moving through the weight classes. He won his first world title at light-flyweight (108lbs/7st, 10lbs).
Inoue clearly carries the greater power, with Fulton only registering 8 KO’s in his perfect win record. The big question is whether Inoue can continue to defy physics and carry his power up one more weight class. Our prediction is it will be fun watching and, in potentially a great fight, the Japanese will further secure his pitch to be ranked the #1 ‘pound-for-pound’ boxer in the world, thus overtaking Oleksandr Usyk at least until he fights Daniel Dubois next month.
The Fulton v Inoue contest will be available in the UK on Sky Sports from 9:30 BST tomorrow (25th). The renowned British fight publication Boxing News pronounce it as “Unmissable”, and they shouldn’t be far wrong.
Enjoy !
The Undisputed 