DURING 2024, Naoya Inoue further added to his extensive stretch of world title fight victories by extending his run to a mind-boggling 22 wins in consecutive bouts with world honours at stake. Now, as Inoue seeks a third defence of his undisputed super-bantamweight title, the Japanese sensation has revealed one weakness of Sam Goodman’s that he may seek to exploit.
After becoming Japan’s first ever undisputed champion, Inoue, 28-0 (25 KOs), stepped up to 122lbs in 2023 in the hopes of conquering a fourth weight-division and wasted no time, facing super-bantamweight poster boy and unified champion Stephen Fulton.
In one of the year’s standout performances, Inoue made relatively easy work of the American, claiming the WBC and WBO straps with an eighth-round knockout before moving on to face another unified title-holder in Marlon Tapales. who was halted in the 10th round when they met five months later.
Victory over Tapales saw ‘The Monster’ become boxing’s second multi-divisional four-belt undisputed champion and has since made two defences of the 122lb crown during 2024, stoppages of Luis Nery and T.J. Doheny adding to an ongoing streak of nine straight wins inside of the distance.
However, a third outing of the year was postponed when Australia’s Sam Goodman, 19-0 (8 KOs), was forced to withdraw from their proposed Christmas Eve contest due to a cut suffered by the challenger in his final sparring session.
Instead, Inoue and Goodman will meet on Friday, January 24 in Tokyo, and when quizzed upon the impact that the postponement has had on the champion in a media pool, the undefeated pound-for-pound star revealed that he feels as though the delay has actually ‘helped him’.
“I’m in the best shape now,” he said in quotes attributed to The Mainichi.
“The postponement by a month has helped me get my feel and focus right.”
Meanwhile, even with the four-week deferral, it is unlikely that Goodman’s eye will have fully recovered in time for his world title bid and Inoue went on to admit that this could be a target for him to aim for come fight night.
“It’s a fight, so it’s natural to do that. That’s a big weak point for him and can be my key to victory.”
Inoue-Goodman tops the bill at the Ariake Arena which features a trifecta of well-ranked Japanese world title hopefuls in Jin Sasaki,18-1-1 (17 KOs), Goki Kobayashi, 8-1 (5 KOs), and Toshiki Shimomachi, 19-1-3 (12 KOs).
