The best fight of 2019 is going to be repeated. Naoye Inoue and Nonito Donaire will rematch in Tokyo on June 7th.
The fight will take place at the Saitama Super Arena. Since their first fight both men are undefeated with Inoue, who has never lost, winning three bouts and Donaire two.
The scorecards were all over the place after the first fight with one judge having it extremely close. In the end they read 117-109, 116-111 and 114-113 in favour of Inoue.
Inoue (22-0) experienced serious adversity for arguably the first time in his career in the first fight. Donaire fractured his orbital bone but the Japanese fighter was able to secure a narrow decision win.
Donaire (42-6), who celebrates his 40th birthday this year, was named ‘Fighter of the Year’ in 2012. He is enjoying a late renaissance and has captured the WBC bantamweight belt since his loss to Inoue.
Inoue currently holds the WBA, IBF and The Ring titles. The winner of this contest will undoubtedly be able to call themselves the best bantamweight on the planet.
Recent events in Japan have been exclusively for local fighters. But the government has now eased Covid-19 travel restrictions meaning that foreign fighters are able to compete again.
Numerous boxing matches were cancelled due to Covid-19 including the middleweight unification bout between Gennady Golovkin and Ryōta Murata. That fight was supposed to take place last December but has now been rescheduled for the Saitama Super Arena on April 9th.
Japan has a history of hosting big boxing matches. Mike Tyson famously lost to Buster Douglas at the Tokyo Dome in 1990.
