Just as this weekend is extremely busy for the fight scene in the English speaking world, the Japanese scene is equally busy as well. As for as interest from over here goes, the two of the six fights stand bigger than the rest. Saturday’s battle between 2012 Olympic gold medalist Ryota Murata and multiple time title challenger Hassan N’Dam will set the winner up for a true world title shot down the line while Sunday brings one of Japan’s top pound for pound fighters when “Monster” Naoya Inoue defending his WBO super flyweight title against Mexico’s Ricardo Rodriguez.
Naoya Inoue (12-0, 10 KOs), now 24, has been Japan’s great boxing prodigy in recent years. He won his first world title in his sixth pro fight, defending it once, and then jumped two divisions to super flyweight to claim his second. Inoue features athletic feet, excellent handspeed, and great power for the weight. I am not being hyperbolic when I say that Inoue is one of the most talented fighters not just in Japan, but in all of boxing. He is also in an excellent division with the likes of Chocolatito Gonzales, Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, Carlos Cuadras, Khalid Yafai, John Riel Casimero, and more. The dream is that he enters the fray and starts fighting them, but the reality of boxing financials is that Inoue makes great money in Japan. There is little incentive for him to travel.
This weekend he is in against Ricardo Rodriguez (16-3, 5 KOs) of Mexico City. Rodriguez is coming off a good win over previously unbeaten Carlos Narvaez. His losses are a meaningless four round split decision in his third pro fight and two competitive decisions to David Carmona. Carmona since those fights went on to fight Inoue himself and became the only man to go the distance with him in a title fight. He then nearly upset Carlos Cuadras, so there is no shame in losing to a good fighter David Carmona. Yet that is what I have to talk about for Rodriguez, one win and a couple losses to a pretty good fighter. Now Rodriguez is going in against a truly elite talent.
There is nothing in either fighter’s career so far to indicate that Ricardo Rodriguez is any sort of threat to Naoya Inoue, but it is always a joy to watch Monster fight so I am looking forward to it anyway.
Ryota Murata (12-0, 9 KOs) versus Cameroon’s Hassan N’Dam (35-2, 21 KOs) is a much more evenly matched fight. In fact, I only have one negative thing to say about it and it has nothing to do with the fighters or the matchup. It is this: This is not a world title fight. The WBA belt on the line calling itself a world title is bogus. Gennady Golovkin is the WBA middleweight titlist. This fight will put the winner in line to eventually fight him, but the hardware itself that the winner receives will mean nothing more than that no matter what it is called. I repeat: The winner of this fight will not be a world champion, titlist, belt holder, or anything other than a real top contender.
With that out of the way, Murata is an interesting case study. When he turned pro after winning his gold medal, Murata was already twenty seven years old. Japanese fighters much younger than that are often moved very quickly into world title belts, so there was a logical assumption that Murata would be moved very fast. He hasn’t been. Especially by Japanese standards, Murata has been moved slowly and methodically. If he was debuted as an 18 year old American prospect, I would actually say he is being moved quickly as he has been fighting ten rounders against fighters with good records since his third pro fights, but he isn’t. It is also worth noting that though this fight is in Japan, Murata has been somewhat forced to fight four of his last five outside of Japan due to a lack of any real Japanese scene above welterweight. Both his size and his fighting abroad are also unusual for a Japanese star.
N’Dam is a known commodity at this point as Murata’s opponent. In truth, N’Dam is a pretty excellent boxer. If he stays on his feet, he tends to win basically all the rounds he fights. Staying on his feet has been the problem, however. In his two true world title shots against Peter Quillin and David Lemieux, N’Dam was dropped eleven times. Yet, he also won five or six rounds on each judge’s scorecards for both of those fights. The France based Cameroonian has also been able to use his high skill level to pretty easily outbox midlevel middleweights such as Max Bursak, Giovanni Lorenzo, Fulgencio Zuniga, and Curtis Stevens. Hassan N’Dam’s not as easy, but still clear 2010 win over Avtandil Khurtsidze looks better by the day too as Khurtsidze continues to climb the division.
So the questions here become both can N’Dam stay on his feet in enough rounds to win a decision and can he actually get that decision in Japan? I do trust Japanese officiating to an extent as there isn’t an egregious recent history of robberies like say in Germany or even Texas. Murata has pretty slow feet, so N’Dam should be able to box him. Ryota also has reasonably fluid hands with some clear punching power too though. Plus, N’Dam is a fighter that relies on his legs who has been dropped a lot and is entering his mid 30s. He could be about ready to rapidly regress as a fighter. There is nothing not to like about this fight as a matchup for these two in this stage of their career.
Also on the Inoue card, Akira Yaegashi (25-5, 13 KOs) makes the third defense of his IBF light flyweight title against two time title challenger Milan Melindo (35-2, 12 KOs) of the Phillipines. On the Murata card, Mexican WBC titlists Juan Hernandez Navarrete (34-2, 25 KOs) and Ganigan Lopez (28-6, 17 KOs) travel to defend their WBC flyweight and light flyweight titles respectively against young Japanese prospects. Lopez will meet 25 year old prospect Ken Shiro (9-0, 5 KOs) and Navarette will be in against 21 year old Daigo Higa (12-0, 12 KOs). Finally, on a separate card, young, 21 year old WBO light flyweight titlist Kosei Tanaka (8-0, 5 KOs) will defend against unbeaten Puerto Rican Angel Acosta (16-0, 16 KOs).
