Where there was once doubt, uncertainty, even hope, there is now only fact, only inflexible and iron truth. Naoya Inoue, the undisputed super bantamweight champion, is the best and greatest fighter in the land of the rising sun, the best and greatest fighter anywhere illuminated by that same sun’s rays. If that second claim is more fragile than the first, let the greatest threat to it prove his superiority against neither a retread opponent nor one whose threat is halved by the terms of engagement.
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Junto Nakatani had his chance at the Tokyo Dome Saturday, before a crowd 55,000 strong: an opportunity secured by the kind of swift and tidy negotiations that speak to motivations more intrinsic than financial. What did he do with it? It depends on what you think can be redeemed and salvaged from a loss. Not all losses are equal, and Nakatani acquitted himself well if you subscribe to the calculus that yielded the 116-112, 116-112, 115-113 scores. But his typical fire, fire that immolates opponents and satisfies expectations—where was that? Nakatani’s was a puzzling performance, one that revealed a small but insurmountable disparity in talent, which was to be expected, and an unflattering deficit in daring. This second quality, given the fighter and the magnitude of the event, was as unexpected as it is unforgettable.
Luis Nery, Roman Cardenas, and Nonito Donaire each gained a more intimate and acute understanding of Inoue’s greatness, just reward for hazarding it. Nakatani took no such gambles, and almost none in the first half of the fight, conducting himself more like an actuary assessing risk and probability than a fighter confronted with a heretofore unsolvable riddle. “Naoya is quite a good learner,” he said afterwards, explaining a strategy that seemed to prioritize preservation over victory. “He learns a lot in such a short period of time, so I didn’t want to disclose everything that I have in the early rounds. That’s why I fought that way.” Nakatani might ask Vasilii Lomachenko what charity is earned by ineptitude and inaction performed under the guise of reconnaissance.
The problem for Nakatani was that his coyness held victory at bay—all the while, Inoue was looking to hurt him, taking risks that conveyed genuine intent and control. Inoue’s successes in the first half of the fight were few—a sharp jab, a right hand to the body—and reflective of his own caution, proof of the challenge Nakatani posed. But there is a stark and undeniable difference between studying to survive a monster and studying to dismantle a man. Though Nakatani was largely unscathed midway through the fight, he had but six rounds to win the majority of twelve.
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What has always charmed about Inoue is not his preternatural athleticism, the command of body and space that warps the interplay of limbs in a manner not seen since Doris Law was stitching trunks for Pensacola’s finest. Nor his sudden and frightening power, his verve, even his ambition. It is his penchant for fighting to the level of his competition, this humanizing flaw that found common ground between audience and spectacle. For Inoue, this resulted in desultory or reckless moments, rounds, even entire fights where he slackened his focus and technique, attempting to break with forceful belligerence what might be solved with clinical precision. Not so against Nakatani, who Inoue handled with the caution of a herpetologist, his precognitive reflexes attuned to every possible counter yet barely sharp enough to escape them.
But by the middle rounds, Inoue seemed taxed: the punches that landed, those that found only Nakatani’s guard, those that missed entirely—all exacted an outlay. The contortions of his torso, that balletic defensive wizardry needed to escape the clever counters, the accumulated extra steps needed to negotiate range, to outmaneuver the lead foot of a southpaw three inches taller, who lurked like a crocodile eyeing the herd at water’s edge—there was a levy on these, too.
When that payment was collected, the fight shifted strikingly, validating for Nakatani, a strategy that for six rounds seemed bafflingly acquiescent. Beginning in the eighth round, Inoue looked increasingly haggard, his technique and defense dulled, as might be expected of a 33-year-old super bantamweight. A less effective night dispelled the notion that Inoue had taken the eighth off. The tenth was Nakatani’s best, a round of pressure and artful combinations that introduced Inoue to a new peril. “The Monster” has faced determined opponents before, men who have stymied him, hurt him, even floored him. But he has never looked as battle-worn as he did getting outworked by Nakatani, when a hint of desperation crept into his movements, when the end that awaits every fighter menaced even this generational one. Despite being cut over the eyebrow by a headbutt, Nakatani returned to his corner with a smile.
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In Maupassant’s The Duel, the protagonist, M. Lantin, experiences a moment of internal conflict, friction between his desire to act bravely and the involuntary but no less intense resistance of the body in a moment of danger; between “the being that wills and the being that resists, each prevailing in turn.” It would be a feat were Inoue able to act bravely under such duress; this is what Wladimir Klitschko confronted whenever his chin wagged and knees weakened. It would make for a better story, a more dramatic retelling, could one romanticize the psychology of so great a fighter. But no such conflict or complexity exists in Inoue. Refreshed by a minute recovery, invigorated by the potential of that tentatively staunched cut, Inoue fought the eleventh with a ferocity yet unseen in the fight. As if to settle accounts, to even the score between accident and intent, Inoue broke Nakatani’s orbital bone with an uppercut.
It was a reminder, one reiterated hours later by another monster, another multidivision terror, one even more cruel, that some fighters have a malice and capacity for violence that separates them even among their peers. It more than separates—it exalts. And whom should we exalt more than Inoue?
***
There is a time in a man’s life when his perspective shifts, when he wonders less about what the future holds for him and more about what will unfold in his absence. A similar shift occurred in that harrowing tenth, when Inoue, a fighter who for years has shattered the hourglasses of others, finally betrayed the effects of time. In those three minutes of fragility and weariness, there was a glimpse of the vacuum left by his absence—the void that cannot be filled by the calculations and reconnaissance of those who inherit the expectations of aficionados old enough to favor the past. What the future holds for Inoue is whatever he chooses, but what will unfold in his absence? What can we expect of these fighters who can populate but not popularize an already niche sport? Let the question remain rhetorical for now.
For now, revel in the present.
In Between Rounds 