The dangerous puncher Luis Nery (35-1, 27 KOs) and undisputed super bantamweight champion Naoya ‘Monster’ Inoue (26-0, 23 KOs) are reportedly being talking about meeting on May 6th at the 55,000-seat Tokyo Dome in Japan.
Nery: A Formidable Challenger:
Hopefully for Inoue’s sake he doesn’t live to regret his choice of taking on Luis Nery because this guy is an explosive puncher, who fights well when in Japan. Nery is 2-0 fighting in that country, and it seems to take him to another level when he’s fighting in front of Japanese fans.
If Inoue loses this fight, he only has himself to blame because fans prefer that he move up to 126 and take on the champions in that division.
Inoue reportedly wants to stay at 122 long enough to defend his recently won undisputed super bantamweight championship against these three:
- Luis Nery
- Murodjon Akhmadaliev
- John Riel Casimero
Inoue’s Undisputed Reign
Staying at 122 to defend against Nery and avenge the loss of fellow countryman Shinsuke Yamanaka would seem like an admirable thing for ‘Monster’ Inoue to do.
Nery had made easy work of the Japanese hero Shinsuke, the WBC bantamweight champion, knocking him out in the fourth round in their first fight in 2017 and then in two rounds in their rematch a year later in 2018.
‘Pantera’ Nery coming in overweight for the rematch with Shinsuke angered a lot of fans, as they felt that it was not only unprofessional of him but it gave him an unfair advantage. But the truth is, Nery would have won anyway, even if he had come in at the right weight because he was the better fighter than him.
Naoya captured the undisputed 122-lb championship last December, stopping IBF & WBA champion Marlon Tapales in the tenth round at the Ariake Arena in Tokyo.
After the fight, Inoue revealed that it had been the most difficult contest of his career, which some fans had a hard time believing because he’d had a lot of trouble in his first contest with Nonito Donaire in 2019.
However, Tapales was hitting Inoue with solid shots with a lot of power in every round of the fight, and you could see the way that they were snapping his head back that this was far from an easy fight for the Japanese star.
Those were thudding shots that Tapales was landing, and you could see that Inoue was not enjoying the fight.