As fight fans know, two big and respected names from the sport recently spoke of wanting to see a fight between Naoya Inoue and Gervonta Davis, these two people being Stephen Espinoza of Showtime, and Floyd “Money” Mayweather. Plenty of other folks have expressed their shock and surprise at this fight – between a current 122 pounder and a big 135 pounder who has boxed as high as 140 – even being mentioned.
It does seem unreasonable, unrealistic and just unfair and too big of a jump in weight for Inoue (Mayweather suggesting the fight could, in fact should happen, at a catch-weight). Now, Top Rank boss Bob Arum, who co-promotes “The Monster,” has given his take on this spoken of fight. Speaking with Fight Hub TV, Arum said the fight “makes no sense at all.”
“Inoue started at 108, and now he’s worked his way up to 122,” Arum said. “He is a tremendous star in Japan. Virtually nobody in Japan knows who Tank Davis is. Why would Inoue now, when he’s undersized at 122, talk about fighting a guy who is essentially a 140 pounder? It makes absolutely no sense, I mean – no sense! I mean, would Inoue have any chance with Shakur [Stevenson]? Probably not, Shakur’s way too big for him. You know, let’s not get carried away. I mean, Terence Crawford showed what a great fighter he is the other week, but you wouldn’t want to put him in with Tyson Fury.”
Putting Crawford, a welterweight, in with Fury, who is of course a heavyweight, might be too big a stretch from Arum, but you see where he’s coming from, you see what he means. The sport has weight classes for a reason, and Inoue against Tank at anything above 126 pounds (126 being a weight Tank is no longer able to make and would possibly be too big a step up for Inoue anyway) is just crazy.
When asked if the fight would sell and that it’s not that out of the question as Tank stands around the same height as Inoue, Arum was still not having any of it.
“Yeah, I know he [Tank] sells in the US, but it’s not good for Inoue to rush up and fight guys who are so much bigger than he is,” Arum said. “I don’t care [about] the stature of Tank, Tank is…. that’s why they call him Tank. He’s the bigger person. Inoue looked like a shrimp compared to [Stephen] Fulton. I was there, I said, ‘Oh, my God, this is gonna be really tough.’ He handled Fulton easily, let’s see what he does with the Filipino (Marlon Tapales). And then there are guys at 126 that will test him. Let’s see how he does there. To put him in with a 140 pounder, you’ve gotta be stupid! And the Japanese are not stupid.”
Often times, plenty of people find themselves disagreeing with things Arum says, but not here. On this subject, Arum is 100 percent bang on correct. Let’s hope this silly talk of Inoue fighting Tank stops. Let’s face it, it never should have started in the first place.
