Naoya Inoue’s aura has cracked — and Junto Nakatani is built to test it

The biggest all-Japanese fight in history is just around the corner.

Naoya Inoue defends his undisputed super bantamweight titles against Junto Nakatani on Saturday — live on DAZN worldwide — inside the famous 55,000-capacity Tokyo Dome. The challenger, Nakatani, is aiming to join Inoue as a four-weight world champion.

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Inoue (32-0, 27 KOs) and Nakatani (32-0, 24 KOs) have been on a collision course for a number of years. Both unbeaten men are bonafide superstars in their home nation of Japan, and at ages 33 and 28, respectively, have bulldozed their way into boxing’s pound-for-pound rankings. Inoue landed at No. 2 and Nakatani placed No. 6 in Uncrowned’s most recent rankings.

Japan has a proud fighting history, but no fight has come close to eclipsing the scale of this weekend’s, appropriately titled “The Day.” The unbeaten 122-pounders head to the Tokyo Dome in an attempt to surpass the buzz of the last major event to occur inside the Bunkyō-based stadium — Mike Tyson’s shocking loss to James “Buster” Douglas in 1990.

Largely thanks to Inoue, boxing is booming again in Japan. Today, “The Monster” is the most recognizable active sportsman in the “Land of the Rising Sun” outside of the MLB’s Shohei Ohtani, and after sowing the seeds of indestructibility over 27 consecutive world title fights, is beginning to feel the weight of national pride on his shoulders — something deeply embedded in Japanese culture.

“I can’t afford to lose,” Inoue told The Ring late last year ahead of the prospect of this superfight. He also alluded to how important “pride” was to him in still being able to perform at the highest level and continuing to challenge himself.

Nakatani has carved out his impressive career in the shadows of Inoue, winning world honors at flyweight, super flyweight and bantamweight. He now heads to the Tokyo Dome for the first time in his career, with the sole mission of snatching Inoue’s superstar mantle and replacing him as the country’s top icon in combat sports.

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It’s the classic story of the hunter, Nakatani, becoming obsessed with becoming the hunted — a position Inoue has become quite familiar with over the past decade.

“I will elevate every aspect of my game and become the best version of myself yet,” Inoue told the media upon the official announcement of this contest at the start of the year. “I am going to show the difference in our class.”

Since this fight with Nakatani has been made official, Inoue has stopped referring to his rival with the polite “-kun” suffix in their native Japanese — an obvious sign that he has shifted into fight mode and is now dialed in to register what would be the biggest win of his career to date.

But the timing of this contest — and the relative form of both fighters — throws up the classic dichotomy of how to approach such an important fight: With the head or heart?

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After rampaging his way through four weight classes while displaying his mesmeric dynamite power, Inoue has changed tactics over the past two fights, convincingly routing both Murodjon Akhmadaliev and David Picasso over 24 combined rounds.

These disciplined performances marked only the fourth and fifth times an Inoue opponent heard the final bell, and the first since Nonito Donaire at bantamweight in 2019.

Inoue is no spring chicken, but it would be premature to attribute this deviation in attack down to miles on the clock. Inoue has demonstrated himself to be one of the smartest fighters on the planet and is perhaps taking a more cautious approach to the fight game after suffering knockdowns against Luis Nery and Ramon Cardenas.

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Inoue is back in the ring with a “puncher” in Nakatani this weekend — more specifically a vicious left hand that has closed the show on a number of occasions — but will the champ have the same composure and discipline to fight at range and with less confrontation in a fight of such magnitude?

This could be where the result of Saturday’s super-bout hinges.

Ahead of Inoue’s fight with Cardenas in May last year, I spoke with some of the victims of the “Monster,” posing a simple yet seemingly impossible question: How do you beat Naoya Inoue?

It was Australia’s Jason Moloney who perhaps gave the most interesting answer as we jump ahead 12 months:

“What’s important is that Inoue really backs himself — he will take risks, which is what makes him so exciting to watch and so dangerous. He backs himself and his power, but when he attacks, he is there to be hit if you’re good enough. But who is?”

Maybe Nakatani is the answer to Moloney’s question. It’s hard to imagine Inoue not being lured into a more aggressive version of himself in this historic weekend for Japan, with the pressure to live up to his “Monster” moniker heightened in front of 55,000 local fans.

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But with the knowledge on his other shoulder that he has been extremely successful over the past 24 rounds of combat with a more measured, scientific approach, this conflict may leave Inoue in no-man’s land for the first time in his career, playing into the attacking instincts of the hungry challenger.

The ask is still huge for Nakatani. He didn’t set the world alight in his debut bout at super bantamweight against Sebastian Hernandez Reyes, but that’s what warm-up fights are for, right?

As with derbies in soccer, form may well go out of the window here as emotions take over. Inoue’s aura has not vanished, but it has cracked. And cracks are invitations.

If Nakatani cannot seize that moment, he will be swallowed by it. But if Inoue cannot command it, he may be remembered by it.