KNOCKOUT! Naoya Inoue stops Marlon Tapales to go undisputed at 122

Naoya Inoue grew to become a two-division undisputed champion in Tokyo, knocking out a sport Marlon Tapales within the tenth spherical of their 122 lb championship unification.

Inoue (26-0, 23 KO) picked up the WBC and WBO titles from Tapales (37-4, 19 KO), including to the WBA and IBF belts he claimed earlier this yr with a win over Stephen Fulton Jr.

It took Inoue two fights within the 122 lb division to go undisputed, simply over a yr after totally unifying the 118 lb division.

Inoue, 30, didn’t have his most thrilling efficiency, and the majority of that’s credit score to Tapales, 31, who actually fought about in addition to anybody may have cheap anticipated.

The Filipino southpaw was dropped within the fourth spherical, however stored attempting to make changes and discover methods to win, however that effort had him fairly drained by the eighth or ninth, and when he acquired put down once more in spherical 10, he simply couldn’t get again to his toes.

However give Tapales credit score for being about as efficient as anybody has towards Inoue over time. He deserves respect for what actually was a reasonably good battle to observe, although in the long run, the “Monster” feasted as soon as extra.

Undercard outcomes

• Seiya Tsutsumi UD-10 Kazuki Anaguchi: A superb battle. Tsutsumi (10-0-2, 7 KO) pulled this out of the fireplace, kinda, scoring sufficient knockdowns to take the battle on scores of 94-92, 94-92, and 95-91. For lots of it, Anaguchi (6-1, 2 KO) was the clear higher fighter, however Tsutsumi’s energy made the final word distinction in a good consequence. Ought to be mentioned that Anaguchi didn’t look good after the battle, staggering to his nook and having to be helped out, although he was upright. Hopefully the younger man will probably be alright, and our greatest needs to each fighters after this conflict.
• Andy Hiraoka TKO-5 Sebastian Diaz (1:52): The standard Hiraoka mismatch, as soon as once more leaving everybody to surprise when he’s actually going to take a halfway-decent opponent, on condition that he’s 27 now and has been a professional for a decade. Hiraoka is now 23-0 (18 KO), whereas the over-matched Diaz falls to 18-7-1 (13 KO). Hiraoka says “any champion at 140, I’m coming for you, man,” so apparently he plans to hop from combating guys ranked 574th on the earth on BoxRec to Haney, Teofimo, Matias, and even Rolly Rollie.
• Yoshiki Takei KO-2 Mario Diaz: Takei is now 8-0 (8 KO) to start out his boxing profession. The 27-year-old southpaw appears to be transferring step by step to the 122 lb division, a former legit champion kickboxer for Okay-1 who was ranked as the perfect fighter in his division and No. 8 pound-for-pound when he retired in 2020. You may see very clearly in his method that he’s a former kickboxer, however he likes the physique photographs — that’s what acquired him the KO right here — and has some energy, a minimum of to this stage to this point. Diaz is now 21-7 (9 KO), and took the total 10-count upon being dropped.