By Elliot Worsell
NOT content material with beating a few fellow belt-holders in 2023, there’s now each probability Naoya Inoue, the world’s primary super-bantamweight, could be combating Luis Nery, a harmful former champion at 122 kilos, in May 2024.
That’s in accordance to ESPN, who say that Inoue, 26-0 (23), and Nery, 35-1 (27), have agreed to a fight in Tokyo, with Inoue’s undisputed title on the road. They additionally state that Nery’s (life) ban from competing in Japan due to previous transgressions (lacking weight and a doping violation) is not going to be a difficulty in phrases of making certain the fight occurs. How that may be so isn’t fully clear at this level (that is boxing, bear in mind), however regardless, a fight between Inoue and Nery, wherever it occurs, is precisely what the physician ordered.
From Inoue’s viewpoint, there can be no higher problem. After all, with spectacular wins over Stephen Fulton and Marlon Tapales now behind him, and with their belts ripped from them like they had been his all alongside, the fast fear was that Inoue would quickly run out of respectable opponents and be pressured in search of them to leap up yet one more weight class (to featherweight). In Nery, nonetheless, he finds an opponent who isn’t solely harmful – arguably probably the most harmful opponent he has confronted to date – however a pure super-bantamweight, somebody whose first world title was in reality secured down at bantamweight.
Luis Nery (Amanda Westcott/Showtime)
Indeed, Nery gained that WBC bantamweight belt with a fourth-round stoppage of Shinsuke Yamanaka, one other Japanese fighter, in Kyoto in 2017. It was deemed a breakout efficiency on the time just for Nery to later take a look at optimistic for zilpaterol, a banned substance, and undo all his good work. As all of them do, the Mexican had an excuse for the boo-boo, blaming it on meals contamination, however most in boxing had little or no sympathy for him round that point. In reality, it was solely the WBC who believed Nery. They dominated on October 31 of that yr, some two months after the fight, that the take a look at could be defined away with the contaminated meals excuse and subsequently allowed the results of the fight to nonetheless stand. They then ordered a rematch between Nery and Yamanaka for the next March.
Second time round, it wasn’t a drug concern tarnishing Nery’s fame, however as an alternative a weight concern. Three kilos over the bantamweight restrict, Nery gave the look of a fighter who hadn’t even tried earlier than then going into the ring and blasting Yamanaka away inside two rounds. It was a messy, violent finish to a short rivalry filled with controversy and the WBC belt, previously Nery’s, was now left vacant.
Later, though he had outstayed his welcome, Nery did ultimately transfer up a weight. It was there, at super-bantamweight, he then not solely bought his arms on one other WBC belt but additionally suffered his first professional loss. That got here in opposition to Brandon Figueroa in 2021 and noticed Nery stopped inside seven rounds.
Three years on, he seems to be on the point of difficult for world honours once more, solely this time in opposition to Naoya Inoue, a fearsome fighter who has been taken the space simply as soon as since 2016.
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