{"id":374266,"date":"2025-08-26T06:37:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T06:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/374266\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T06:37:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T06:37:14","slug":"confident-or-delusional-adam-maca-doubles-down-on-bold-naoya-inoue-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/374266\/","title":{"rendered":"Confident or Delusional? Adam Maca doubles down on bold Naoya Inoue claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teen star Adam Maca<\/a> has explained why he believes he can beat The Ring No. 2 pound-for-pound fighter Naoya Inoue<\/a> already.
The 18-year-old (1-0, 1 KO) is preparing for the second outing having punctuated his June debut by stopping Rafael Castillo in the second of four rounds<\/a> in the Theater at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n

His first pro fight on British soil will take place in Sunderland on September 6 with no opponent confirmed, but eyebrows were raised when he declared that if it were undisputed king Inoue in the opposite corner then the belts would be returning to Maca\u2019s native Brighton.<\/p>\n

Now, during an interview with The Ring\u2019s Louis Hart, the young bantamweight insisted his lofty claim is not just meaningless bluster. <\/p>\n

When asked if he really believes he could beat Inoue, 32, already, he said: \u201cYes I believe it. Put a lie detector on me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a 10- or 12-round fight I just don\u2019t think anyone can beat me, full stop. I have that confidence in my ability and my fitness. I train hard, I work hard. I don\u2019t think anyone works harder than me. That\u2019s where the confidence comes from.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy team are pulling the reins and guiding me in the right way. I understand I\u2019m not going to be in big fights straight away. It\u2019s building up to that and building the hype around it as well. Say I face Inoue in a few years, it will be well known what I\u2019ve said, everyone will know that I\u2019ve said it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reality is that even in an ideal world, Maca is still years away from world title contention, even though his promoter Eddie Hearn described him as a “freak of nature.”<\/p>\n

The next step takes place on the undercard of Pat McCormack\u2019s clash with Miguel Parra and Maca expects another victory live on DAZN.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cObviously people will say, ‘He\u2019s in with a binman,’ but it\u2019s an apprenticeship so I\u2019m going to take everything fight by fight and win by win and build up to the big fights. I\u2019m more than happy to build up in the right way.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously this is just my life now. There\u2019s no school, there\u2019s no college, it\u2019s just gym, eat, gym, sleep, repeat. It\u2019s not a bad life is it?<\/p>\n

\u201cI had my debut at MSG so that was a flying start and then it has been what I expected; bright lights, cameras and just head down training.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as I\u2019m staying active and getting the fights, I don\u2019t mind where it is. I\u2019d fight in my back garden if I kept my activity up. A ring is a ring and a fight is a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), who makes a defense Sept. 14<\/a> vs. Murodjon Akmadaliev <\/a>in Japan, has had 23 world title fights alone. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teen star Adam Maca has explained why he believes he can beat The Ring No. 2 pound-for-pound fighter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,10188,10181,10187,10186,10179,4496,10182,10183,10184,10185,10180,10193,10192,10175,10173,10174,10190,10176,10172,10194,10189,79,10191,10171,10178,16,15,10177],"class_list":{"0":"post-374266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-community","10":"tag-boxing-fights","11":"tag-boxing-history","12":"tag-boxing-interviews","13":"tag-boxing-magazine","14":"tag-boxing-news","15":"tag-boxing-photos","16":"tag-boxing-rankings","17":"tag-boxing-results","18":"tag-boxing-schedule","19":"tag-boxing-videos","20":"tag-disqualification","21":"tag-draw","22":"tag-fight","23":"tag-fighter","24":"tag-fighter-news","25":"tag-knockout","26":"tag-latest-boxing-matches","27":"tag-ring","28":"tag-ring-magazine","29":"tag-split-decision","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-technical-knockout","32":"tag-the-ring","33":"tag-top-fighters","34":"tag-uk","35":"tag-united-kingdom","36":"tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115093690462047679","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374266","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=374266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}