By Brad Slotnick: Naoya Inoue wanted to impress 118-lb champions Nonito Donaire and John Riel Casimero in the audience last Saturday night by going for a quick body shot knockout of his opponent Michael Dasmarinas in Las Vegas.
Inoue will be fighting the winner of the August 14th unification match between Donaire and Casimero, so he wanted to give them a taste of what they’re up against.
WBC bantamweight champion Donaire (41-6, 27 KOs) has already fought Inoue in 2019, and he’s not intimidated at what he saw from the ‘Monster’ last Saturday. Donaire gave Inoue a tough fight, breaking his nose and fracturing his right orbital bone.
Donaire believes he knows how to beat Inoue from that encounter, even though he failed to beat him.
Upon seeing an opening, IBF/WBA bantamweight champion Inoue (21-0, 18 KOs) delivered a perfect shot that sent Damarinas down. Inoue had knocked Dasmarinas (30-3-1, 20 KOs) down with a similar body shot a round earlier.
In the first round, Inoue had seen that Dasmarinas was vulnerable to body shots after he nailed him with a hard punch that caused him to run for safety for the remainder of the round.
From that point, Inoue changed his original game plan that he had to focus on throwing to the body of Dasmarinas. The change of plans worked perfectly for Inoue.
“In the first round, when I got the first solid shot in, I noticed that Dasmarinas backed off a little bit,” said Naoya Inoue at the post-fight press conference last Saturday.
“From there, I was able to pace the fight in the way that I wanted, and that’s how I finished the fight,” Inoue continued.
“When he came out, I felt that it would take longer to get him out with headshots. So I changed my plans and decided just to go with body shots.
“Of course, it was on my mind,” said Inoue about Nonito Donaire and John Riel Casimero being in the audience during his fight with Dasmarinas. “It was a motivation to basically show and appeal to them that I’m out there and I’m good,” said Inoue.
Casimero has too much experience for him to have been scared off by Inoue’s victory over Dasmarinas. Besides, Casimero already saw the damage that Donaire did to ‘Monster’ Inoue’s face in 2019, and he’ll like his chances of delivering similar punishment.
Inoue dishes out punishment well, but he doesn’t seem to take it nearly as well. When Inoue faces opposition that can handle his power in stay in long enough to land their own shots, he gets frustrated and struggles.
In Inoue’s fight with David Carmona in 2016, he was visibly angry when he couldn’t knock him out and was forced to take many shots.
“They are both hard punchers, so it’s very difficult to guess who is going to win,” Inoue said when asked to pick a winner between the Donaire vs. Casimero fight. “But I feel like the possibility of a decision is relatively low.”