The Monster mashes his way to more belts

Japan's Naoya Inoue outclasses Stephen Fulton and makes his case as boxing's pound-for-pound beast.

Tuesday’s 122-pound championship fight in Tokyo was billed as the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight of the 2020s. No one was ever heard requesting such a rerun, at least no one who was at the original in 2015. This one lived down to that one, which is what happens when Monster meets man.

Naoya Inoue was supposed to be Manny Pacquiao, packing the fists of fury from any angle and never taking a backward step.

Stephen Fulton of West Philadelphia was supposed to be Floyd Mayweather Jr., the maestro of skills, who would bundle all of Inoue’s bullets, tie them together and return them in kind.

Styles make fights. The problem is that no two fights are the same, and neither are any two fighters. Inoue understood that and now the world does.

In his version of history, he would take on the identities of both Mayweather and Pacquiao. That left Fulton with no part to play, except maybe that of a futon.

Inoue took control a few seconds after the first bell and held it until 1:14 had elapsed in Round 8. At that point he closed the show on Fulton and took his 18th knockout win in a title fight. He also improved his overall record to 25-0 and is 11-0 against world champs.

Fulton thus gave up the WBO and WBA super-bantamweight belts to Inoue, who was moving up from 118. The way Inoue is going, he might be done with the 122-pound division quickly enough for Fulton to come back and rule it again. Afterward, he posed in the ring with Marlon Tapales, who holds the other two belts. That bout could happen by the end of the year. Afterward, the 30-year-old Inoue is expected to conquer the 126-pound world.

Like Mayweather often did, Inoue made an excellent boxer look incapable of functioning in his chosen profession. It’s like tennis. There are distinct levels, and they are difficult to cross. You can be one of the best pros in the world and still lose 6-0, 6-0 to Novak Djokovic or Carlos Alcaraz. When you’re as good as Inoue, you’re very bad for the rematch business. He did have one of those against Nonito Donaire, who took him to the limit on a night when Inoue broke his orbital bone. When they met again, Donaire got Monstered in the second round.

The nickname works on several levels. Inoue can make you apply for a different line of employment.

In this one, Inoue began by quickly judging the proper distance and then snapping Fulton’s head back with jabs. Those first punches are often the most illustrative moments. Only then does a boxer know exactly who he’s dealing with, and how hard those hands really are. Fulton quickly gained respect for those hands, to the point that he never enforced his strength and size. 

For the rest of the fight, Inoue was as methodical as an architect and as merciless as a hit man, building his fight with those early jabs and then body shots. In the eighth, one of those downstairs jabs forced Fulton to drop his right hand just a few inches. Inoue answered with a right hand over the top. Fulton stumbled backwards and was obviously in the process of falling, but Inoue didn’t trust gravity. He basically long-jumped toward Fulton and blasted him with a left that left little reason for Fulton to rise again, although he did, momentarily.

One judge gave Fulton three rounds and the other two gave him two apiece. It would not have been hard to pronounce it a shutout. Inoue had not lost a round since a win over Jason Moloney five fights ago, in 2020.

This has been yet another dormant year in boxing, but Inoue’s win was more than just an appetizer for Terence Crawford’s match with Errol Spence Jr. on Saturday, a fight that, like Floyd and Manny, comes along a couple of years too late.

It is, or should be, the beginning of Inoue’s career as a sizzling boxing celebrity in the U.S., on the order of Pacquiao or the young Gennady Golovkin. There is certainly no one more explosive in the business today, and the only question will be the place where Inoue runs into an opponent too big to fall and too strong to withstand. But there doesn’t appear to be anyone in that class until Inoue gets to 130, where Shakur Stevenson currently presides.

Fulton was hoping to carry Philadelphia’s outsized boxing tradition across the big pond. Former heavyweight Randall Cobb used to train in Philly and claimed the city had so much boxing technique in its bloodstream that “even the guys who fight on the street are jabbing.”

Boots Ennis might be the most talented welterweight in the business, and the betting before this one was that Fulton would emulate Bernard Hopkins, the ultimate gamesman, and try to hold and push Inoue from pillar to post and discombobulate him, as he once did to Felix Trinidad. 

As for Fulton, he said he could fight any style he deemed appropriate. “Sometimes I just wake up in the morning and decide how I’m going to fight,” Fulton said.

Instead, The Monster gave Fulton something to sleep on. For the rest of boxing’s remaining fans, he also supplied dreams.