The Japanese boxing market have done a good job of cornering the turn of the year period and even before Fernando Martinez and Kazuto Ioka go at it on December 31 in a highly-anticipated rematch, there’s time for the main man to flex his muscles. Naoya Inoue boxes Australia’s Sam Goodman on Christmas Eve and it’s likely to be another display of beautiful finesse mixed with brute force.
I recently wrote an in-depth piece for my friends over at Odds Now (shout out to Adam ‘Smido’ Smith) as part of my ‘Inside the Ropes’ column, which you might enjoy reading. Here’s the start:
Taglined as one of the most destructive finishers in boxing and a pound-for-pound superstar, Naoya Inoue turns heads both in and out of the ring. Such is the punching power and prodigious prowess of the unified super-bantamweight king, some believe that moving up in weight is a greater threat to his dominance than any physical opponent.
Some of my favorite boxing moments are when they do replays of Naoya Inoue’s punches in slow motion.