Another huge clash between two of boxing’s best fighters could be on the horizon.
Fight fans have just seen one of the biggest boxing matches in recent years take place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Terence Crawford defeated Canelo Alvarez to become the first male boxer in the modern era to become an undisputed champion in three weight divisions.
The victory unsurprisingly saw Crawford take the top spot on The Ring’s pound-for-pound list following his remarkable accomplishment and performance.
Now, a new announcement has laid the seeds for another clash between two of the best boxers on the planet.
Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani set to headline ‘Night of the Samurai’ to set up huge super fight
Turki Alalshikh previously said that a big announcement would be quickly following Canelo Alvarez vs Terence Crawford.
Earlier today, the Riyadh Season event that had been spoken about as “Japan versus the world”, has now been made official for December 27 in Riyadh.
The main event will see Naoya Inoue defend his undisputed super bantamweight titles against his mandatory challenger, Mexico’s Alan Picasso.
Inoue recently survived a late scare to beat Murodjon Akhmadaliev on September 14 in Japan.
‘The Ring V: Night of the Samurai’ also features the man that is expected to challenge ‘The Monster’ if both men are victorious on the same night.
Junto Nakatani, who faces Sebastian Hernandez, will be making his debut at super bantamweight after recently announcing his plans to vacate his WBC, IBF and The Ring titles at the weight below to move up.
Both Inoue and Nakatani are currently in The Ring’s top ten pound-for-pound rankings, boasting identical undefeated records of 31-0.
Among other Japanese stars on the card, Kenshiro Teraji will challenge Willibaldo Garcia for the IBF super-flyweight world title.
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Boxing hasn’t learned from recent errors when putting two rivals on the same card
Naoya Inoue defending his titles against Junto Nakatani in 2026 will be massive, especially if the fight happens in their home country of Japan.
While it makes sense for Nakatani to make his debut at super bantamweight first, and for Inoue to be in attendance so that they can instantly build to the fight that people want to see, there’s a risk in this.
We’ve seen previous Riyadh Season events look to do a similar thing only for it to end up backfiring.
In December of 2023, a huge clash between Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder slipped away after the American suffered a loss to Joseph Parker in the co-main event.
Just several months ago, fans questioned why Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney were fighting different opponents in Times Square instead of facing each other in a rematch.
This was only criticized further after Garcia suffered a shocking loss to Rolando Romero in the main event.