It was, on paper, a perfect fight between two perfect fighters. In one corner you had Naoya Inoue, whose record of 32-0 was perfect. In the other you had Junto Nakatani, whose record of 32-0 was also perfect.
On Saturday, they met in Tokyo, Japan at the Tokyo Dome, a perfect setting. There, before 55,000 fans, they would measure their perfection on the understanding that one of them would leave with a record made imperfect by the other.
Given so much at stake, the aim was to be not just perfect in the ring but precise. Every punch had to count and would be thrown with an awareness that the smallest mistake in its execution could spell trouble. It isn’t easy to fight that way, no, but perfect fighters can manage it.
Sometimes a perfect fight isn’t the most entertaining fight. It is instead described as “cagey” or “one for the purists”. This, we now know, would be true of Inoue vs. Nakatani. They too were cagey, especially early on. Early on, with precision the goal, they both waited for the other to commit. Early on, there was between them a distance neither was prepared to close for fear of doing something wrong, or imperfect.
Inoue, the smaller man by three inches, would edge forward behind a high-held guard and feints. He would shoot his jab up at Nakatani, while Nakatani, whose stance was wide, would do all he could to ensure Inoue remained well out of reach. By doing so, Nakatani could guarantee he stayed clean, untouched.
This approach, from both, was appreciated by those in attendance, despite the lack of noise. In fact, in Japan, a lack of noise will often indicate concentration, focus, fascination. Here, with Inoue and Nakatani, that was certainly the case. For two rounds the only sounds heard around the ring were voices from the corners and the whoosh of missed punches.
They missed a lot, sadly. They both wanted to be perfect, yes, but that doesn’t mean they were. Inoue, for his part, struggled at first to close the gap, while Nakatani waited too long and was then too slow when a chance to counter presented itself. In round two, Inoue targeted the body, the easiest spot to hit, with his right cross, and Nakatani tried to counter this move with a left cross thrown at Inoue’s head. It was a nice idea, but seldom would Nakatani land. He wasn’t quick enough. He wasn’t precise enough.
A better idea was to use the jab, which Nakatani did in round three. That punch was considerably longer than Inoue’s and its length made up for any speed disparity. So, that’s why he used it. Once, twice, three times. Meanwhile, Inoue found the timing for his deadly right hand in the third. He was in and out with it, all the better for having increased the tempo of his attacks.
Then, when the tempo slowed down again, we returned to fencing. Both prodded with their lead hand and the spectacle suffered as a result of them being so precise and so perfect. It wasn’t until round four, in fact, when Inoue landed an impressive jab-right combination, that we heard any sort of noise from the crowd. Even then, the round ended with Barry Jones, commentating for DAZN, saying, “Nothing’s happened so far, that’s the truth of it.”
It sounded like a moan, but it wasn’t. Jones, like us all, knew the qualities of both super bantamweights and knew that whenever two elite fighters meet in a boxing ring there is always the possibility that they cancel each other out. That isn’t to say the fight had no merit as a spectacle. If anything, Jones’ comment was instead a testament to how compelling he found the battle despite its lack of action.
Others, like Terence Crawford, sitting ringside, might have craved more. He was seen resting his eyes between rounds four and five and would perhaps argue that perfection does not have to come at the expense of action. Crawford, of course, recently retired with a record of 42-0, a perfect one, and was throughout his career a champion who managed to blend the two: action and perfection. Often the same has been said of Inoue and Nakatani as well. They too supply perfection and action in equal measure. Just not, it seemed, against each other.
Of the two, Inoue was, from the outset, the more willing. He initiated most of the exchanges and usually punched first. Nakatani, on the other hand, was, for six rounds, waiting too long. He needed to commit more. He needed to throw more. He needed to generate more than just one punch at a time.
There were signs in round six of him at last realising this. He pushed Inoue back at one point. He got a bit busier. He landed a right hook inside as Inoue, growing impatient, lunged forward. It still wasn’t enough, far from it, but Nakatani’s attitude in round six did at least suggest the days of precision were over. He now knew he had to get active. He had to throw caution to the wind. He had to cut loose.
Then came the seventh round and Nakatani cleared his throat with a combination, and although most of the punches thrown in this combination landed on gloves, it still worked as a message of intent, and he was now flowing, and he was showing the kind of urgency he had previously lacked, which in turn created openings for Inoue, who was thankful for it, and needed no second invitation to force through a couple of right crosses, the second of which was heavy, thudding, and for once actually clean, something rare in a fight like that, all foreplay and no penetration. By the round’s end Inoue had, despite Nakatani’s positive start, put the taller man back in his place, and would continue in this vein in the ninth, again buoyed by Nakatani’s sudden inclination to get a little messy and take chances and throw form and to some extent style out of the window in favour of increasing the tempo of the piece and giving himself a better chance of taking something from the fight.
To begin the eighth Inoue chucked threes and fours at Nakatani and Nakatani was surprised by how Inoue had committed to this attack and not pulled out, as was the case in previous rounds, dull rounds, flat founds, rounds in which Nakatani had been patient and precise and had tried to be perfect, perhaps too perfect, and had waited too long, and missed his opportunity to throw something back. Now he was fighting a man who was opening up to him, really expressing himself with his punches and with his movements, and this allowed Nakatani to express himself, too, get off some stuff of his own, and even push Inoue back for the first time in the fight, which he did in round nine, when he landed a big left hand, as well a right hook to the body followed by a right hook to the head, and it was as though he had found his rhythm and his confidence at the same time, and we could all feel it just as he could, I’m sure. Inoue could also feel it, I suspect, which is why when they both launched wild shots at one another and missed, he smiled at Nakatani and Nakatani smiled back, giving the impression they were both having fun, and not just having fun, but loosening up a bit, liberated by the fact that they had done away with perfection and precision and were now getting messy together, like a couple of kids painting.
The fight was all the better for it, of course, especially as a spectacle, and those watching it unfold welcomed the fast starts and the sloppy exchanges because finally we had what we wanted from these two – not perfection, but action. In round nine, Inoue stabbed a vicious right hand through the guard of Nakatani while on the move, and it was noticeable how he was now gliding laterally, Inoue, rather than marching forward, and how Nakatani, down on the scorecards, was the one now doing all the following and the leading, something we hadn’t seen too much of before this point in the fight. Now, as he set his feet, Nakatani was suddenly more of a danger, both to Inoue and to himself, which became only too apparent when he cracked Inoue with a hard left cross, his best punch of the fight, and Inoue for once seemed a touch rattled, dishevelled, and not quite in control the way he likes to be, and usually is, and Nakatani enjoyed this feeling, this feeling of throwing for the sake of throwing and speculating to accumulate. Rather than prevaricating, or waiting to land the perfect shot, he was instead now throwing all the shots he had available to him in the hope that one would land the way he wanted it to land and therefore become the perfect shot at the moment of impact, crack.
Now it was breathless, the action, and we were swept up in the delayed drama of it all. It was truly a fight of two halves but only in terms of how the approaches of the two boxers had shifted from one half to the other and how, in the fight’s second half, they had mutually agreed, with a respectful bow or the subtlest of nods, to throw punches with reckless abandon at the expense of their principles and any thought of tidiness or self-preservation. It wasn’t that it was lacking technique, or indeed its own kind of style, but as they entered round 10 it was true that Inoue and Nakatani were now delightfully disordered in how they were trying to assert their dominance and that this both increased their respective chances of winning and opened any eyes closed at ringside.
One moment Nakatani would back Inoue up to the ropes and the next Inoue, appearing ragged, would explode off the ropes and drive Nakatani away, not caring what landed or how it landed, only that it landed and gave him the upper hand. It was too late, it seemed, to worry much about the accuracy of certain punches, or the sense of certain attacks, because now they were tired and for different reasons desperate, and now damage was being done as a result of this desperation, both with punches and with their heads. Closer than ever, proximity-wise, it was perhaps inevitable that heads soon became weapons and the clashing of them in round 10 would cause the most damage in the fight, with Nakatani left frustrated when an accidental butt produced a cut over his eye, the blood running into his eye, affecting his vision, testing his patience. This cut, it could be said, was a consequence of carelessness, but such is the risk of throwing kitchen sinks and trying to please and, besides, they had committed now, the pair of them, and were in it together, and there was no stopping either their direction of travel or the blood flowing from Nakatani’s wound.
In the next round, Nakatani was as concerned with that wound as the attacks of Inoue and that’s possibly why he found himself nailed by an Inoue right hook on the inside, as well as a gorgeous right uppercut later on, which looked to have momentarily hurt Nakatani and led to him scurrying around the ring and taking two more right uppercuts while on the move, the second of which bent his knees and encouraged Inoue to keep throwing and throwing as Nakatani pawed at his eye, clearly troubled by it and starting to regret the part he had played in turning the fight into what it had become. For whereas once the fight had been slow and safe, now it was anything but, and Inoue was breaking him up, he was smelling blood, he was ruthless, he was merciless, and he leaped in with a stunning right cross-left uppercut combination which steadied Nakatani once more as round 11 came to an end.
Could have done without the cut, Nakatani, that goes without saying, because now he was again thinking too much and he was in danger of returning to the Nakatani we saw in the first six rounds, when he was waiting and worrying and forgot to throw anything of note. Now, in round 12, the same uncertainty would be almost fatal and it was a shame, too, because at one stage Inoue looked up at the giant clock in the Tokyo Dome, clearly fatigued, and that, for Nakatani, represented the opportunity to jump on him, as he did in round nine, and really let his hands go, make the champion feel the pace, and maybe reduce the deficit on the scorecards. As it happened, all the challenger really had for Inoue in the final round were a couple of left hands, which both missed, and for the most part Inoue, still fresh enough to make Nakatani miss, was the one demonstrating control in a fight that had threatened, only briefly, to spiral out of control.
For reclaiming control, Inoue ran out a deserved winner in the end, by scores of 116-112 (twice) and 115-113. He wasn’t perfect in the fight, nor was it a perfect fight, but his record of 33-0 (27 KOs) still reflects a kind of perfection and that, for Inoue, is all that matters.
As for Nakatani, now 32-1 (24 KOs), his pursuit of perfection ultimately backfired. It kept him waiting too long and it cost him. In fact, it was only once he had embraced chaos in the fight’s second half that it looked, for just a moment, as though the underdog might find a way of preserving his own mark of perfection. By then, however, Nakatani had given himself too much to do. He had let go too late, to be precise.
