CARL FRAMPTON admits Nick Ball beating Naoya Inoue could eclipse Llloyd Honeyghan\u2019s famous victory as Britain\u2019s best ever win – and has backed him to pull it off.<\/p>\n
Inoue is arguably the world\u2019s No.1 pound-for-pound fighter at the moment following his dazzling run to 29-0 (26), which has included world titles in four weight classes – and the status as undisputed champion in two of those.<\/p>\n
The Japanese icon, who currently holds all the belts at super-bantam, is now said to be considering a move up to featherweight and Ball has already openly offered him a crack at his WBA belt.<\/p>\n
Frampton has previously raised a few eyebrows by suggesting that \u2018the Wrecking\u2019 Ball, 28, who is 22-0-1 (13), has the style to beat Inoue and he knows that it\u2019s a win that would go straight into British boxing folklore.<\/p>\n
Frampton was named the 2016 Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year after he moved up from his position as world super-bantamweight champion to win the WBA belt at featherweight – just like Inoue would attempt to do against Ball. But the Belfast man thinks Inoue might just come unstuck.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cHe might not be with the bookmakers but Nick Ball would start as a favourite for me in that fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love to watch him fight and I just think there\u2019s a ceiling to how high you can go when you start at light-flyweight like Inoue has.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeatherweight might be Inoue\u2019s ceiling, possibly super-feather, but I don\u2019t think he can go much higher than that. I think Nick Ball\u2019s tenacity, strength, punch power and his resilience as well gives Inoue a lot of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is 39 years ago this September since south London\u2019s Honeyghan travelled to Atlantic City to dethrone the 25-0 Donald Curry, maybe the No.1 pound-for-pound fighter at the time, in what is described by some as the biggest upset in British boxing history.<\/p>\n
And Frampton said: \u201cEven though I\u2019m picking him to cause problems and I make him the favourite, if Ball was to beat Inoue you would have to put it up there with Lloyd Honeyghan beating Don Currie. It would be that big, maybe even bigger.<\/p>\n
\u201cInoue is The Monster and the vast majority of people would have him in the top three pound-for-pound so it would be a humongous win for Ball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARL FRAMPTON admits Nick Ball beating Naoya Inoue could eclipse Llloyd Honeyghan\u2019s famous victory as Britain\u2019s best ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,7177,11907,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-17813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-naoya-inoue","10":"tag-nick-ball","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114333352219494960","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}