LAS VEGAS \u2013 Bob Arum has revealed that plans exist not only for Naoya Inoue to fight Murodjon Akhmadaliev in September, but for further fights in December and in early 2026 \u2013 potentially against Junto Nakatani.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old Inoue, on Sunday at the T-Mobile Arena, defends his undisputed junior-featherweight title against the Mexican-American Ramon Cardenas, 29, on the occasion of Cinco de Mayo weekend.<\/p>\n
It was first reported by BoxingScene that a contest with Uzbekistan\u2019s Akhmadaliev would take place in Japan on September 14, and confirmed by Inoue on Friday, but Top Rank\u2019s Arum, Inoue\u2019s co-promoter, has plans in place that potentially extend to him again moving up in weight and returning to the US to fight again in 2026.<\/p>\n
Suggestions persist that he will fight in December in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia against Nick Ball of England before fighting Nakatani, also of Japan, in their home country in what increasingly represents the most appealing contest of all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s on the books for September 14 in Japan,\u201d Arum told BoxingScene of the date with Akhmadaliev. \u201cOne step at a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHis calendar\u2019s filled. September; December in Riyadh; the spring in Japan, maybe for the Nakatani fight, and then he\u2019s going to look at the 126lbs division. Certainly we\u2019d love to have him back here [in the US] fighting for a featherweight world title.\u201d<\/p>\n
Incidentally, on the undercard on Sunday, Mexico\u2019s Rafael Espinoza, the WBO featherweight champion and another Top Rank-promoted fighter, defends his title against Edward Vazquez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2013 Bob Arum has revealed that plans exist not only for Naoya Inoue to fight Murodjon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,4496,4495,7177,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-74484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-news","10":"tag-boxingscene","11":"tag-naoya-inoue","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114450971043436610","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74484","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=74484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}