One of the sport’s very best fighters in the world is prepared to make a run at becoming a four-division champion.
Unbeaten lineal, WBC and IBF bantamweight king Junto Nakatani has confirmed his intention to soon campaign in the 122lbs division. The three-division titlist and BoxingScene’s No. 7 pound-for-pound entrant has teased the pending move for several weeks but openly admitted that the time has come to add a few more pounds to his 5ft, 8ins frame.
“Am I moving up to the super bantamweight class for my next fight? Yes,” Nakatani confirmed during a recent recording for WOWOW’s Excite Match SP series. “Will I relinquish my bantamweight title? Yes, I think so."
The segment is due to air on August 11, along with a rebroadcast of Nakatani’s stoppage win over Ryosuke Nishida in their June 8 WBC/IBF unification bout in Tokyo, Japan.
Nakatani, 31-0 (24 KOs) has held major titles at flyweight, junior bantamweight and bantamweight. His abovementioned win over Nishida marked his first-ever unification bout in ten fights across the three weights.
It also extended Nakatani’s current five-fight knockout streak. The entirety of the run has taken place at 118lbs, beginning with his sixth-round stoppage of Mexico’s Alexandro Santiago last February 24 in Tokyo.
It has become more apparent that there are not any plans to further unify the bantamweight division, though hardly a surprise. As previously reported by BoxingScene, Nakatani is on a collision course with countryman and undisputed 122lbs champ Naoya Inoue, 30-0 (27 KOs).
Once a dream match, their highly anticipated showdown is targeted for next May.
Inoue will first defend his undisputed crown against former unified 122lbs titlist Murodjon Akhmadaliev, 14-1 (11 KOs) on September 14 in Nagoya, Japan. With a win, Inoue is then rumored to face Mexico’s Alan David Picasso, 32-0-1 (17 KOs) in late December.
For now, Nakatani will acclimate to the junior featherweight division. His debut at the weight is expected to take place later this fall. The occasion will mark his first non-title fight since November 2022 when he moved up to 115lbs from flyweight, when Nakatani went ten rounds in a unanimous decision win over Mexico’s Francisco Rodriguez.
“Building my physique will be important,” said Nakatani, who trains out of head coach Rudy Hernandez’s L.A. Boxing Gym in downtown Los Angeles. “After that, it's all about feeling it, and how it feels when I move up in weight. It's a process of applying that to boxing.”
