For many people, Naoya Inoue is the pound-for-pound number one right now but that hasn’t stopped Eddie Hearn from naming the man from his Matchroom stable that he would like to face ‘The Monster.’
Multi-weight champion and power-punching Japanese boxer Inoue defended his undisputed WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO super-bantamweight world titles against Mexican Luis Nery this week.
Despite facing an early setback with his first career knockdown in the opening round, he showcased remarkable resilience and, in front of a packed crowd of 55,000 at the Tokyo Dome, he rebounded in his characteristic style to secure a knockout victory.
After the knockdown and losing the first round, Inoue dominated from the second round onwards, inflicting several knockdowns of his own before finally delivering a solid left hook that sent Nery to the canvas for a final time in the sixth.
Almost as soon as Inoue stopped his man, the next challenger Sam Goodman jumped into the ring and called him out for another defence of his four world titles, and now Hearn has thrown a tother name into the ring.
Speaking to Matchroom, Hearn has now thrown the name of one of his boxers, Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez, into the ring.
“If you want a soundbite could we just call out Naoya Inoue now at 122lbs. People talk about Inoue going up and fighting [Gervonta] ‘Tank’ Davis. Why can’t ‘Bam’ go up and fight Inoue?
“That’s not got the blessing of [Rodriguez’s coach] Robert Garcia but it’s been talked about in the past. ‘Bam’ really struggled to make weight against Sunny [Edwards] in his last fight. It’s mad, they were talking about him winning titles at 108 as well, so he now knows that flyweight is his division. But he will 100% move to bantamweight at some point, maybe even super bantamweight.”
He then spoke about the challenge of generational great boxers moving up the weight to test themselves as he thinks Rodriguez will do in his career.
“Every now and then a generational great comes along and the only way of beating them is making them move too far up the weights. Naoya Inoue, great example, Lomachencko as well. There’s other fighters, maybe Terence Crawford if he moves up and goes to 160.
“And that’s maybe where you will see ‘Bam’ getting challenged the most, I think you will see ‘Bam’ being at least a four division champion, maybe five.”
As well as this offer for Inoue, Saudi Arabia’s boxing chief Turki Alalshikh is also reportedly looking to bring Inoue to the UK for his first fight in the country.
It is mooted he might compete on the undercard of a possible undercard topped by British former two-time world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua on September 20 or 21 with a huge purse in the region of $10m being floated.
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