Floyd Mayweather ruffled a few feathers earlier this year, when he said that he couldn’t class Naoya Inoue as the pound for pound king until he has regular and strict drug testing around his fights.
Mayweather implored Inoue to have a fight in the United States, where he would be subjected to random blood and urine testing, to clear any doubts about his destructive rise through the weights.
And this week, former Inoue opponent Paul Butler has weighed in on Mayweather’s comments – and believes ‘Money’ could be on to something.
Butler was stopped by Inoue in eleven rounds at the Ariake Arena last December, when the pair locked horns for the undisputed bantamweight championship of the world.
And ‘The Baby Faced Assassin’ compared Inoue’s rise from light flyweight up to super bantamweight to Manny Pacquaio’s climb up the weights and stated “he needs testing,” when speaking to SecondsOut.
“Years before I boxed him [Inoue], I said he needs testing. What kid goes from 7 stone 10 to 8 stone 10, and he’s still putting people flat on their back. I don’t think it’s normal.
He’s very good at what he does, his skills are very good and his skills are unbelievable. But to be carrying that power?
It’s like what everyone said about Pacquiao years and years ago. How was he coming up from all the way down in the weights to guys like Margarito?
I think Floyd could be right, I think he does need to come to America for regular testing. But we’ll never know, so you can’t point the finger and say he’s a cheat, because he’s never been proven to be a cheat.”
Inoue’s most recent outing was perhaps the most impressive of his career thus far, stopping unified super bantamweight world champion Stephen Fulton at the same venue in which he dispatched of Butler.
His next bout is set to be an undisputed 122lbs clash with Marlon Tapales, which has been earmarked for the end of this year.