Naoya Inoue continues to eye up a move to the featherweight division as he seeks to further enhance his already tremendous legacy, and the Japanese sensation has admitted that two of his potential bouts at 126lbs would be ‘difficult to predict’.
Inoue trumped Junto Nakatani in what looks set to be his solitary outing of 2026 – after an extremely active four-fight 2025 – but ‘The Monster’ seems poised to make up for his inactivity by making his next clash a mammoth one.
Currently, Inoue is expected to take on fellow pound-for-pound star Jesse ‘Bam’ Rodriguez in March, with the Texan planning on one further contest as a bantamweight this year before moving up and challenging for Inoue’s undisputed super-bantamweight crown.
Should Rodriguez attempt to further delay their much-reported meeting, Inoue has threatened to move into the featherweight scene and out of the American’s reach, where he could become boxing’s seventh five-division world champion of all time.
Speaking with Ring Magazine, Inoue discussed which of the featherweight world champions he would prefer to face, admitting that he has no real preference but feels as though challenges for Rafael Espinoza (WBO) and Brandon Figueroa’s (WBA) belts would be harder to predict.
“I think any of them would make for an interesting fight. But Espinoza and Figueroa have particularly unique styles and sense of distance, so I think those would be fights that are difficult to predict.
“[Angelo] Leo and [Bruce] Carrington are more traditional in terms of their styles. But that’s just talking about their styles.”
Inoue then went on to reiterate that the unpredictability of Espinoza and Figueroa may not necessarily make them tougher fights than respective IBF and WBC world champions, Angelo Leo and Bruce Carrington.
“Yeah [Espinoza and Figueroa throw punches from unique angles]. And sometimes those kinds of things can actually work perfectly for me, so it’s hard to say exactly how it would play out.”
Inoue also stated that he is intending on fighting twice in 2027, meaning that he is expecting to just fight once at featherweight next year, presuming his super-bantamweight showdown with Rodriguez goes ahead in the spring.
