Naoya Inoue Next Fight: ‘The Monster’ is the busiest pound-for-pound claimant

Naoya Inoue is everything you would choose if you were building a prizefighter. Concussive power, searing speed, fearlessly brave and outrageously active. While his peers pretend to retire or ask for Jake Paul’s number, ‘The Monster’ is always preparing for the next war.

The undisputed super bantamweight champion has fought three times in 2025 and already has a fourth match-up in the schedule. Read on for everything you need to know about Naoya Inoue’s next fight.

Inoue is in the conversation when it comes to crowning the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet. But before we come to the comparisons, how does ‘Kaibutsu’ stack up to his two closest rivals in terms of activity? 

Undisputed super middleweight kingpin Terence Crawford moved up two divisions to secure that crown in September. It was one of the stand-out achievements in modern boxing. But even if you forgive the 13-month gap between his win over Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and his previous fight as an acclimatisation period, ‘Bud’ has still not fought twice in a year since 2019.

Oleksandr Usyk is the other name offered as a worthy pound-for-pound king and rightly so. The undisputed heavyweight champion is a touch more active than Crawford. ‘The Cat’ beat Tyson Fury twice last year for example. But before that, Usyk’s last multiple-fight year was his three victories in 2018 when he was still a cruiserweight.

Boxers fighting less when they break big is nothing new. More money is on offer for less work and boxing is a job that can scar you for life, or worse. Which makes Inoue’s level of activity all the more impressive. If you remove the pandemic-stained 2020, which made major boxing events impossible for months and inadvisable with fans in the building for longer, Inoue has not had a single-fight year since 2012. Even then, ‘Kaibutsu’ debuted as a professional that October.

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Inoue stepped up to super bantamweight 15 months ago. In that time, the Japanese legend has managed seven fights. All victories, six by knockout. Inoue has collected all four major titles at the weight as well as The Ring crown. The combined record of the champions and challengers Inoue has beaten in less than a year-and-a-half is a staggering 180-12-2. Quantity meets quality.

This year has already seen Inoue rack up a trio of victories. Ye Joon Kim got the call every boxer dreams of when Sam Goodman pulled out of his scheduled shot at Inoue due to a cut to his eyelid. A Balboa-esque bolt from the blue for the WBO’s 11th-ranked challenger. A shot at the title! 

But, like finding Freddy Krueger in your bathtub, the dream turned into a nightmare as Inoue blasted the Cinderella man out in four rounds. One down.

But Ramon Cardenas, unbeaten in seven years, was expected to provide Inoue with something more robust to chew on in May. At this daunting task, one could argue Cardenas excelled. He knocked Inoue down in the second round, only the second boxer to do so after Luis Nery. The bad news? ‘Kaibutsu’ thrashed him in the eighth round. Two down.

Third out of the blocks was the determined Murodjon Akhmadaliev. The southpaw from Uzbekistan was determined because he had been within a hair’s breadth of a shot at Inoue two years ago, before a shock loss to Marlon Tapales scuppered a planned undisputed title unification. Inoue soared, Akhmadaliev seethed.

Akhmadaliev did not reclaim the WBA and IBF belts that Tapales had took from him and lost to Inoue. But he did take the Japanese icon the distance for the first time since 2019. Nonito Donaire and David Carmona are the only other men to go 12 rounds with the power-punching pound-for-pounder. But Inoue has never been a slugger and he unpicked Akhmadaliev with movement, defensive genius and measured offence. Three down.

The fourth and final appointment of Inoue’s stacked 2025 is a title defence against David Picasso. The artistically-named challenger tries to puncture the champion’s 31-0 record on December 27 at the ​​Mohammed Abdo Arena, Riyadh. It is only the third Inoue fight to take place outside of Japan, with Las Vegas hosting two bouts and the SSE Hydro in Scotland being the unexpected venue for another. 

Picasso had been set to fight Inoue in May, but he withdrew for reasons that have never fully been cleared up. Reports suggested there was a hiccup in negotiations and it was Picasso’s father pushing the cancellation. Considering the fact David boxed in July, two months after the scheduled Inoue clash, it is clear the issue was not a long-term one.

That fight saw Picasso face another Japanese opponent; Kyonosuke Kameda. The canny Kameda tore up my pre-fight prediction he would get stopped, with his 24-year-old having to knuckle down for a majority decision win. While my prediction was not prophetic, perhaps some of my words from that piece are more pertinent. “To tell you the truth, Inoue will destroy him if each man executes their normal game.”

Can Inoue execute the terrifyingly technical gameplan that has made him a first-ballot Hall of Famer? Will Picasso’s reckless style bear fruit against a champion who does everything right? That, my friends, is why we have the fights.

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