LAS VEGAS – Naoya Inoue has confirmed that he will fight Uzbekistan’s Murodjon Akhmadaliev in September.

On Sunday at T-Mobile Arena, Inoue will defend his undisputed junior featherweight title against Ramon Cardenas, resisting again fighting at home in Japan to prioritize the US and a Mexican-American opponent on the occasion of Cinco de Mayo weekend.

It was in 2021, under conditions still influenced by the Covid pandemic, that Inoue fought and stopped the Philippines’ Michael Dasmarinas. In the event of victory, he will return to Japan to fight the 30-year-old Akhmadaliev, as BoxingScene reported. Since 2021, Inoue has established himself as one of the world’s very finest active fighters; he retains a sufficiently demanding schedule that, should he defeat Akhmadaliev, he is likely to fight again before the conclusion of 2025.

“[That’s] the only thing that’s written in stone,” the 32-year-old Inoue said. “In terms of my future, the next fight [is] in September with MJ. But that’s as far as it goes, [in the context of what’s] under contract.”

If it is tempting to interpret those plans as a demonstration of his confidence of victory over Cardenas – Inoue is again the significant favorite – he stressed that he is not overlooking his latest challenger.

There are also less-mature plans for him to fight England’s Nick Ball in December in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, before pursuing a particularly appealing all-Japanese contest with Junto Nakatani back in their home country in 2026.

“For this fight, I have prepared harder than for any other fight I’ve had,” he said. “I’ve no fear of losing.

“The schedule’s full for the rest of the year, but maybe the spring [of 2026], and maybe the latter part of the year, the possibility [of fighting Nakatani] has been raised.

“The winner of that fight is going to be the fighter who becomes the lead fighter for Japan – for the future of boxing in Japan – and I want to tell everyone that it’s now Naoya Inoue.”

Inoue was also asked about the transformation in his reputation and profile since his last fight in the US, and he responded: “It was in the pandemic, the last two fights here. But even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been at T-Mobile. Having this at T-Mobile now, there’s more attention to me now than there was back then.

“I think this [fight] is key to becoming a Mexican hero.

“I didn’t see anything in particular [when I was face-to-face with Cardenas], but I think he’s calm and he’s confident and he’s coming in to fight.”

Declan Warrington has been writing about boxing for the British and Irish national newspapers since 2010. He is also a long-term contributor to Boxing News, Boxing News Presents and Talksport, and formerly the boxing correspondent for the Press Association, a pundit for BoxNation and a regular contributor to Boxing Monthly, Sport and The Ring, among other publications. In 2023, he conducted the interviews and wrote the script for the audio documentary “Froch-Groves: The Definitive Story”; he is also a member of the BWAA.