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Tale of the tape
Here’s a look at how Inoue and Nery measure up ahead of tonight’s main event. Both men stand 5ft 5in, while Inoue brings a two-and-a-half-inch reach advantage into the ring. Each came in comfortably below the junior featherweight division limit of 122lbs at yesterday’s official weigh-in.
Naoya Inoue v Luis NeryKey events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature
That’s all for tonight. Thanks for following along with us and check back shortly for our full fight report.
Inoue wins by sixth-round TKO!
Nery down in round six!
Round 6
Nery is taking a lot of punishment early in the sixth and this one is going to be over soon. And Inoue drops Nery with a savage right hand! And this one is over! Naoya Inoue has retained his undisputed junior featherweight championship by a sixth-round technical knockout!
Nery down in round five!
Round 5
Inoue is landing punches in combination. Nery needs to changes something up soon or this is going to be a short night. Nery drops his left hand momentarily and is sent to the deck by another vicious left hook from Inoue! Only 30 seconds till the end of the round. Can Nery make it against one of the sport’s great finishers? Inoue is on the attack but Nery is going to make it, saved by the bell!
Guardian’s unofficial score: Inoue 10-8 Nery (Inoue 48-44 Nery)
Round 4
Inoue’s unique blend of power, speed and footwork on full display here in the fourth. Now he’s pointing to his jaw and showboating a little in the center of the ring. Inoue throwing a lot of shots upstairs while looking for that left hand to the midsection. Nery’s face is starting to show quite a bit of swelling.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Inoue 10-9 Nery (Inoue 38-36 Nery)
Round 3
Neither fighter appeared too hurt after his knockdown. But Inoue appears to have settled into the rhythm in the third. He’s timing Nery’s right hand and looking to counter with the left hand over the top. Nery will need to make an adjustment here if he hopes to stay in this. According to Compubox, Inoue has outlanded Nery by a 40 to 11 margin over the second and third rounds.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Inoue 10-9 Nery (Inoue 28-27 Nery)
Nery down in round two!
Round 2
Nery landed 15 of 52 shots in the first round, according to Compubox’s punch statistics, compared to eight of 24 for Inoue. The round unfolds on even terms for the first two minutes until Inoue returns the favor with a sharp left hook to the inside while moving backwards that drops Nery to the canvas! Nery came forward, overextended himself and Inoue caught him with a left.
Guardian’s unofficial score: Inoue 10-8 Nery (Inoue 18-18 Nery)
Inoue down in round one!
Round 1
There’s the bell! The orthodox-southpaw matchup sees both men tapping gloves from the start. Inoue throws a lunging right hand with bad intentions that Nery dodges easily. Inoue connects with a right hand. Nery is throwing to the head and body, scoring sparingly. And Inoue goes down! Inoue is down for the first time in his career! A left hook from Nery to Inoue’s chin puts the champion down! He gets to a knee quickly and beats the count. But Nery is swarming in for the finish. He’s got Inoue trapped in a corner. Inoue is throwing his way out of his and makes it to the bell. What a start!
Guardian’s unofficial score: Inoue 8-10 Nery (Inoue 8-10 Nery)
The fighters have been announced by ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr. The final instructions have been given by referee Michael Griffin, the seconds are out and we’ll pick it up with round-by-round coverage from here!
It’s time for the fighter entrances at the Tokyo Dome. First out of the tunnel is the challenger, Luis Nery, making the long walk to the ring draped in a Mexican flag and trailed by the rapper C-Kan. And now here comes the Monster! Naoya Inoue has emerged to deafening roars from the sold-out crowd, ambling to the ring in a black robe with white striped trim. Both fighters have climbed through the ropes when the Mexican national anthem starts playing. Nery and his corner sing the words with passion. Then comes Kimigayo, the Japanese national anthem. Inoya sways back and forth methodically, the picture of focus. Not much longer now.
Takei upsets Moloney for WBO bantamweight title
Australia’s Jason Moloney has lost his WBO bantamweight title to Japan’s Yoshiki Takei in a major upset. The ringside judges handed down a unanimous decision by scores of 117-110 and 116-111 (twice). Takei, a former kickboxing champion, raced out to a yawning lead on the scorecards before flagging badly in the championship rounds. Maloney came on strong in the final session, pouring on the punishment and nearly stopping his exhausted foe. But Takei made it to the final bell (barely!) and has become a world champion in his ninth professional fight. What drama!
Takei has shown mounting signs of weariness in the seventh, eighth and ninth rounds. He’s repeatedly looked up at the clock, a telltale of fatigue. Moloney hasn’t fully taken advantage, but he’s clawed his way back into the fight. Worth noting: Takei has only been past the eighth round once in his brief professional boxing career, an 11th-round TKO of Bruno Tarimo in 2022.
Jason Moloney is in big trouble against Yoshiki Takei in the final undercard bout ahead of the main event. Six rounds into their scheduled 12-round fight and it’s unclear if the Australian has managed to win a single round. Takei, a former K-1 kickboxing champion, appears within touching distance of winning a world title in only his ninth professional fight.
Tale of the tape
Here’s a look at how Inoue and Nery measure up ahead of tonight’s main event. Both men stand 5ft 5in, while Inoue brings a two-and-a-half-inch reach advantage into the ring. Each came in comfortably below the junior featherweight division limit of 122lbs at yesterday’s official weigh-in.
Naoya Inoue v Luis NeryOne more preliminary bout ahead of tonight’s main event as Australia’s WBO bantamweight champion, Jason ‘Mayhem’ Moloney, defends his belt against rising knockout artist and former kickboxing world champion Yoshiki Takei.
“I’ve always wanted to fight in Japan, and to do it on this huge show in front of a sold-out crowd at the Tokyo Dome is what dreams are made of,” Maloney said this week. “I want to be known as a throwback world champion. I won my title in America, defended it in Canada, and now I’m willing to go into enemy territory and defend my title in Japan.”
Takuma Inoue has retained his WBA bantamweight title with a unanimous-decision win over Sho Ishida. The judges’ scores were 118-109 (twice) and 116-111. In a crowd-pleasing scrap full of two-way action, Inoue overcame a patchy start including a first-round knockdown to batter and bloody Ishida with deft counter-punching down the stretch.
Naoya Inoue and Luis Nery both comfortably made weight ahead of tonight’s main event. Each came in under the junior featherweight divisional limit of 55.3kg (122lbs) at Sunday’s weigh-in: Inoue with 100g to spare at 55.2kg (121¾lbs) and Nery 500g under at 54.8kg (120.8lbs).
Nery was stripped of his bantamweight world title in 2018 after failing to make weight for a fight in Japan, prompting an indefinite ban by the Japan Boxing Commission to fight in the country that wasn’t lifted until this year.
“I knew he would make the weight,” Inoue said yesterday. “It’s a big event and Nery is probably making more for this fight than any previous fight in his career. I wasn’t worried.”
The Tokyo Dome’s primary tenants are the Yomiuri Giants of Nippon Professional Baseball, who have played their home games there since its opening in 1988. Yesterday, the Giants played host to the Hanshin Tigers, which gave organizers roughly 13 hours to change the building over for today’s boxing card. Here’s a fun time-lapse video showing the conversion.
A bit of early drama in the second-to-last preliminary bout ahead of tonight’s main event. The WBA bantamweight world champion Takuma Inoue (19-1, 5 KOs), younger brother of Naoya, has suffered a first-round knockdown against former world title challenger Sho Ishida (34-3, 17 KOs) in their scheduled 12-round encounter. A perfectly placed left jab by Ishida dropped Inoue to the canvas but he easily beat the count and doesn’t seem hurt.
Seigo Yuri Akui has just retained his WBA flyweight title by a unanimous decision over Taku Kuwahara. The three judges at ringside handed down scores of 117-111 (twice) and 118-110 in a rematch of their 2021 Japanese title bout, which Akui won by 10th-round TKO.
Akui really stepped on the gas during the second half of a fight that was contested at a lively pace. A promising start to a stacked TV undercard.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to the Tokyo Dome for tonight’s blockbuster between Naoya ‘Monster’ Inoue and Mexican challenger Luis Nery. A sellout crowd of about 55,000 spectators is expected as boxing returns to the Big Egg for the first time since February 1990, when a 42-1 underdog named James ‘Buster’ Douglas knocked out then-unbeaten heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in one of the great upsets in all of sport.
Inoue (26-0, 23 KOs) is no Tyson. He’s even better, both on body of work and appetite for destruction. Since winning his first world championship at 108lbs in his sixth professional fight back in April 2014, the 31-year-old knockout merchant from Kanagawa prefecture has added belts at 115lbs, 118lbs and 122lbs while amassing a record of 21-0 in world title fights, including 19 coming inside the distance. Most recently, Inoue became the undisputed champion in two different weight classes over a 378-day span, knocking out Paul Butler in December 2022 to consolidate all four titles at bantamweight, then stopping the previously unbeaten Stephen Fulton in his junior featherweight debut and fully unifying the belts at 122lbs with a stoppage of Marlon Tapales in December. He is only the second Japanese man to win titles in four different weight classes after the great Kazuto Ioka.
Nery (35-1, 27 KOs) is a former two-division world champion who held the WBC’s version title at both bantamweight and junior featherweight. The 29-year-old Tijuana southpaw lost his bantamweight strap after badly missing weight for his 2018 rematch against Shinsuke Yamanaka, which earned him an indefinite suspension in Japan that was lifted earlier this year. After becoming a two-weight champion with a 2020 decision over Aaron Alameda, he suffered his first and only professional loss the following year by seventh-round knockout in a title unification bout with Brandon Figueroa. He’s rebuilt nicely since then with four straight wins – including a spectacular 11th-round knockout over Azat Hovhannisyan last February in one of the year’s best scraps – but he will go off tonight as a 10-1 underdog on merit.
We’ve got three world title fights on the televised undercard ahead of tonight’s main event, which should go off around 8.30pm local time (7.30am EDT/12.30pm BST). Plenty more to come between now and then!
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s Thomas Hauser’s lookback at Canelo Álvarez’s defeat of Jaime Munguía over the weekend.
