Stephen Fulton and Naoya Inoue are set to leave no stone unturned for their upcoming unified title fight. The tension between the two was palpable as Fulton, the WBC/WBO junior featherweight titlist, refused to break eye contact during their final meeting before the fight. Fulton weighed in at a solid 121.9 pounds for his first bout outside the U.S., while Inoue, set to play the challenger role for the first time in over four years, scaled a career-heaviest yet phenomenally sculpted 121.7 pounds. This epic twelve-round 122-pound title clash is scheduled for Tuesday at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan.
The battle of the undefeated will headline a four-fight telecast on ESPN+ commencing at 4:30 a.m. ET and will also be locally streamed on Lemino. Fulton, hailing from Philadelphia, arrived in Japan a fortnight ago to acclimate to the foreign environment and brace for his underdog status. Meanwhile, the odds keep favoring Yokohama’s Inoue listed as a -450 favorite by bet365 sportsbook, while Fulton is at +350 ahead of his third WBO and overall title defense, and his second as the unified WBC/WBO titlist.
This fight is particularly significant for Inoue as he moves up from bantamweight, where he was the division’s first fully unified champion. A victory on Tuesday will see him make history as Japan's first boxer to achieve unified title status in at least two weight divisions. Inoue has also held the WBC junior flyweight and WBO junior bantamweight titles and aims to become the third Japanese boxer to win at least one title in four weight divisions. The co-main event of the evening will see Cuba’s two-time Olympic Gold medalist Robeisy Ramirez defend his WBO featherweight title against Inoue's stablemate Satoshi Shimizu.
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