Naoya Inoue Focused On Picasso In Riyadh Showdown As Nakatani Bout Looms [Exclusive]

Naoya Inoue admits he doesn’t think much about his ring moniker — now or ever as he prepares for his fight against Alan Picasso (32-0-1, 17 KOs). He doesn’t even have a favorite fictional monster.

Inoue is set to top a monster of a Riyadh Season card. His fight is the main event of Ring V: Night of the Samurai, scheduled for Saturday, December 27, 2025, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Inoue (31-0, 27 KOs) has been active in the ring and is stepping into it this weekend in his fourth fight of the year. That’s about the maximum number of fights for a modern fighter, and they have been against top-level opposition. He last fought in September, beating Uzbekistan’s Murodjon Akhmadaliev, who is known by the far simpler ring moniker “MJ.”

Naoya Inoue, world super bantamweight boxing champion of Japan during an April 5, 2025 press conference. | IMAGO / AFLOSPORT

Inoue talks MJ and Picasso

“My impression of MJ was that he was a very highly skilled fighter. Both he and Picasso are tough fighters. MJ was not very easy to hit,” he said in an exclusive interview with KO On SI.

He admits to watching a tape of Picasso, whom he said is a “very brave” fighter with a different style from MJ. In boxing, there are levels, and Inoue showed he is on a different one when he outboxed MJ (14-2), winning an emphatic unanimous victory on the cards. MJ is a fine boxer himself, but he was befuddled the entire fight.

Speaking through his translator, Inoue’s musings on sport are short, crisp haikus. He seems tired after a long day. It will be a long week culminating in his showdown with Picasso. Really, though, his team has begun the long countdown to his fight with Junto Nakatani (31-0).

Junto Nakatani (left) and Naoya Inoue (right) during the JBC Annual Boxing Awards ceremony 2024. | IMAGO / AFLOSPORT

It isn’t too much hyperbole to describe that fight as the biggest in Japanese boxing history. No other all-Japanese clash has attracted as much interest. If the fight takes place in Japan, it will be the first time that the eyes of the boxing world have settled on Tokyo since Buster Douglas upset Mike Tyson on February 11, 1990.

Top Rank and Naoya Inoue's team deserve credit for building him into a global star. This fight in Riyadh is a new country for Inoue; he has fought in Las Vegas and Glasgow as well. He said he would like to fight in some of those places again, after facing Nakatani.

“Of course, I have had some thoughts about that fight with Nakatani, but, for now, I am focused on this one [with Mr. Picasso], this is where my concentration is.”

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