Korean Ye Joon Kim challenged the undisputed super bantamweight champion to hit him on the chin during the fourth round and a few seconds later he was on the ground

Naoya Inoue ridicules Ye Joon Kim when the latter marks his chin to make him hit him. The KO comes immediately (Images: Top Rank)

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If Naoya Inoue (29-0; 26 KOs) continues on this path, when his career ends he will be one of the boxers with the most victories in world title fights in history. The extraordinary Japanese boxer is already at 22. Against the Korean Ye Joon Kim (21-3-2; 13 KOs) he achieved his tenth consecutive KO in a fight in which he was defending his status as undisputed champion in the super bantamweight division.

The fight took place at the Ariake Arena in Tokyo and ended at 2:25 minutes into the fourth round , when American referee Mark Nelson finished counting. The challenger held up well in the first two rounds and in the third he already felt the power of the Japanese ‘Monster’, who left him shaken. In the fourth Inoue turned off his rival’s light when the latter hesitantly told him to hit him on the chin.

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Naoya immediately caught him, thus ridiculing Joon Kim, who swallowed a right hook from which he was not going to get up. Spectacular one-two from Inoue. It should be mentioned that Kim accepted the fight with 10 days notice , as a replacement for the Australian Sam Goodman , who suffered an eye injury during a training session that did not heal, which forced him to postpone the fight and later to withdraw.

Now the great Japanese champion, one of the best pound-for-pound boxers, is expected in the rings of the United States, where he has not fought since 2021. His co-promoter Bob Arum (Top Rank), who was present at the evening, announced that Inoue’s next fight will take place in Las Vegas, in the spring . It is too early to know who his opponent will be, but the Mexican Alan Picasso (31-0-1, 17 KOs) is being pointed out from the United States. Arum expressed that he is not in favor of the Japanese moving up to featherweight in 2025. What we do know is that a fight between Naoya and Junto Nakatani (he would have to move up a weight class) would paralyze Japan, although the latter has also been paired in a superfight against Jesse Rodriguez.