SPORTS FACTS AND FIGURES 7: NAOYA INOUE IS THE RING FIGHTER OF THE YEAR 2023
By Maloney L. Samaco
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 07 Jan 2024
Naoya Inoue has won the prestigious The Ring Fighter of the Year award for his 2023 huge wins with the 30-year-old Japanese star convincingly defeated then-unbeaten WBC/WBO superbantamweight champion Stephen Fulton on July 25 and WBA/IBF superbantamweight title holder Marlon Tapales on December 26 to earn The Ring’s vacant junior featherweight title and undisputed champion status.
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Inoue (26-0, 23 KOs) defeated The Ring No. 1 contender Fulton and The Ring No. 2 Tapales in the junior featherweight division at the time, in his first two matches in the 122-pound weight category. Inoue of Yokohama, Japan started his 2023 campaign as the undisputed bantamweight champion having won all four 118-pound titles from May 2019 to December 2022. Inoue and Terence Crawford are the only male two-division undisputed champions in the four-belt era - WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF - and he reached that status in just a span of 12 months.
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The four-division titleholder thus became the first Japanese boxer to win The Ring’s Fighter of the Year award, and the first Asian boxer to earn the highly esteemed recognition since Manny Pacquiao did it thrice in 2006, 2008 and 2009. Ring Magazine started naming a Fighter of the Year in 1928 when Gene Tunney was the first awardee.
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Inoue is also the former undisputed bantamweight world champion, having held the WBA, IBF, and The Ring titles between 2019 and January 2023, and the WBC and WBO titles between 2022 and January 2023. He has also held the WBA (Regular) bantamweight title from 2018 to 2019, the WBO junior-bantamweight title from 2014 to 2018, and the WBC light-flyweight title in 2014.
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Ryan Garcia plans to return to his prior target, WBA superlightweight titleholder Rolando Romero. “I’ve notified my team I’m going a different route,” Garcia posted Saturday morning on his X account. “My intent now is to fight Rolando Romero.”
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Oscar de la Hoya has announced that the enormous light welterweight championship fight between WBC champion Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia is being penciled for March in Las Vegas. De La Hoya says he thinks most likely that the Haney-Garcia fight can be realized, and discussions will start next week for this mighty event.
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Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) has scored big wins in the last two years, grabbing world titles in lightweight and superlightweight divisions, defeating champions Regis Prograis and George Kambosos Jr. twice and won an upset over boxing great Vasily Lomachenko.
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Ryan Garcia redeemed himself from his big loss to Gervonta "Tank" Davis to defeat Oscar Duarte by 8th round knockout last December 2 in Houston, Texas. He called out Las Vegas’ Romero (15-1, 13 KOs) immediately after the fight.
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Romero stopped Venezuelan Ismael Barroso by TKO in the 9th round last May 13 at The Cosmopolitan, Paradise, Nevada, U.S. to win the vacant WBA super lightweight title.
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January 3, 2024 was considered one of the oddest games as far as statistics is concerned in the NBA. Utah, Detroit, Indiana, Atlanta and Cleveland all scored at the 140-point mark. There had never been a single play date in NBA history where five teams all scored at least 140 points. And there never existed a day where the NBA haf four teams scoring at least 130 points and lost.
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Detroit, Oklahoma City, Orlando and Milwaukee, scoring at least 130 points still resulted in their losses. There was one previous instance of three teams scoring 130 in losses on the same day and that happened in April 10, 2019 to Utah, Sacramento and Atlanta.
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Sports History: June 7, 2006. Carlos Baldomir of Argentina defeated American Zab Judah in an upset victory for the WBC welterweight title.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Maloney L. Samaco.
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