Naoya Inoue vs. Kouhei Kono – Official weights

By Boxing News - 12/30/2016 - Comments

By Eric Baldwin: WBO super flyweight champion Naoya Inoue (11-0, 9 KOs) weighed in successfully on Thursday for his fight against Kouhei Kono (32-9-1, 13 KOs) on Friday night on December 30 Ariaka Colosseum in Tokyo, Japan.

Inoue weighed 115 pounds. For his part, Kono also weighed in at 115lbs. #10 WBO Kono hasn’t done much to earn the title shot against the 23-year-old Inoue in recent years. For example, Kono lost his last fight against Luis Concepcion last August. Kono lost his WBA World super flyweight title in that fight.

Normally, when champions lose their titles, they immediately get a rematch if their management has been clever enough to include a rematch clause. But instead of Kono fighting Concepcion again, he’s facing Inoue for his WBO title.

This will be Inoue’s fourth defense of his WBO title that he won two years ago in beating Omar Andres Narvaez by a 2nd round knockout in 2014. Inoue has looked nearly invincible since beating Narvaez. No one that he’s fought has been competitive with him. David Carmona gave Inoue some problems earlier this year in May, but he still wound up losing a 12 round decision.

Inoue is the favorite to win this fight. Kono is not in the same league as Inoue in the talent and youth department. The fight will still do well in Japan.

Also on the card, IBF light flyweight champion Akira Yaegashi (24-5, 12 KOs) weighed in at 107 ½ pounds for his title defense against Wittawas Basapean (31-5, 12 KOs). Basapean also weighed in at 107 1/2lbs. It should be a good fight between these two high level fighters.

Huge anticipation for Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fight

There’s a great deal of interest from Mexican boxing fans in Mexico about the potential mega-fight between stars Saul Canelo Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on Cinco de Mayo on May 6 in 2017. Already there are some Mexican websites trying to jump the gun in being the first to release the news about the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight. It’s hard to understand the interest though, because Chavez Jr. has done so little in the last four years since losing his WBC middleweight title in 2012. Chavez Jr. has only fought five times in the last four years, and he’s only faced good one good fighter in Andrzej Fonfara during that time. Chavez Jr. lost that fight by a 9th round knockout last year after quitting on his stool after getting knocked down in the 9th.

An offer of $6 million was offered to Chavez Jr. by Canelo’s promoters, and they’re waiting to hear whether he’ll accept the offer or not. Canelo’s backup plan is to fight WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders on May 6 for his title. This would be a catchweight fight at 165lbs.

Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions had the foresight to have him target the vulnerable WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith on September 17 this year to win his WBO 154lb title. At the time, few understood why Canelo would go after a seemingly worthless title at 154 against a guy not well known with the casual boxing fans in the U.S or worldwide.

Once Canelo had the WBO 154lb title, Golden Boy made a request to the World Boxing Organization to have Canelo installed as the No.1 contender for Saunders’ WBO 160lb title, and the WBO accepted the request last week and installed Canelo as the new No.1. The ranking allows Canelo to go to the head of the line to fight Saunders for his WBO middleweight title when/if they negotiate the fight. Canelo obviously won’t take the fight with Saunders if he can get the bigger one against Chavez Jr. But it still remains to be seen whether Chavez Jr. will accept the deal offered to him.

The offer was said of $6 million was said to have been a final offer, but it’s possible Golden Boy might be persuaded to sweeten the offer by bumping up the guaranteed money a little more. This is guaranteed money plus pay-per-view upside.

Chavez Jr. could wind up with a career high payday for the Canelo fight if it brings in over 1 million buys. Some think Chavez Jr. could wind up with $10 million for the fight and Canelo $15 million. It’s a lot of money for both fighters. That’s why it’s important that the negotiations continue by both sides until they exhaust every avenue to get the fight made.

Chavez Jr. has fought the following fighters since his loss to Sergio Martinez in 2012:

Brian Vera x 2

Andrzej Fonfara

Marcos Reyes

Dominick Britsch

The only good fighter out of that bunch is Fonfara. It doesn’t matter though that Chavez Jr. is no longer fighting good opposition. He has his famous father’s last name in Chavez, and that helps him draw interest in his fights without him having to fight good opposition. The fans tune in to see the son of Julio Cesar Chavez, because they want watch the son of the legend.

There are some boxing fans who still think that Chavez Jr. can turn his career around to improve enough to beat Canelo and move on to win a world title at super middleweight. It’s hard to picture Chavez Jr. doing either of those things at this point in his career. The way that Chavez Jr. looked in his last two fights against Britsch and Reyes, he looks like a fading fighter.

Chavez Jr. did well at middleweight against the small handful of good fighters he fought in that weight class, but he mostly seemed to do well, based on having a large weight advantage over his opponents. Chavez Jr. draining himself to make the 160lb division, and then putting a great deal of weight back on after he made the weight.

The weight advantage that Chavez Jr. had over his opponents made him very hard to beat. Chavez Jr. doesn’t have large weight advantages over his opponents any longer now that he’s fighting at super middleweight. If he fights Canelo, he’ll likely have a large weight advantage over him, but then again maybe not. Some fans think Canelo fights in the 180s now. That’s in the same ballpark as Chavez Jr. for his fights.