Naoya Inoue is completed with the bantamweight division however is way from performed with chasing historical past.
The unbeaten three-division champ turned the first-ever Japanese boxer to say undisputed championship standing within the three- or four-belt period following his eleventh-round knockout of Paul Butler. Inoue added the WBO title to his assortment that already included the lineal, WBA, WBC and IBF bantamweight titles following his one-sided destruction of England’s Butler on Tuesday at Ariake Area in Tokyo.
It was no secret that the combat can be the final as a bantamweight for Inoue (24-0, 21KOs), having beforehand instructed BoxingScene.com of his want to grow to be at the very least a four-division champion. Now that he’s established immortality for his beloved nation, the objective now could be so as to add to his lead.
“I’ll purpose to do the identical at tremendous bantamweight,” Inoue instructed BoxingScene.
Inoue’s knockout of Butler wrapped up a dominant reign which noticed the 29-year-old Yokohama native go 9-0 on the weight together with 7-0 in major title fights. It’s the lone division by which Inoue efficiently unified, having held the WBC junior flyweight and WBO junior bantamweight titles although unable to land the opposite titleholders within the ring.
It wasn’t a problem at bantamweight, the place he collected each belt in wins over 4 reigning titleholders. The transfer to 118 additionally noticed Inoue declare prime honors within the World Boxing Tremendous Sequence. He entered with the secondary WBA title, leaving with three wins together with the WBA ‘Tremendous’ and IBF belts together with the excellence as one of many perfect fighters on this planet.
With historical past achieved, it’s now time to pursue the subsequent problem.
“I plan to maneuver up in weight,” confirmed Inoue. “Once I do transfer up in weight to tremendous bantamweight, I don’t suppose I’ll come again down.”
Jake Donovan is a senior author for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox