By REYNALD MAGALLON
Marlon Tapales held his ground but even his best was simply not good enough against a real ‘monster’ in Naoya Inoue.
The Japanese champion stamped his class and essayed a convincing 10th round knockout over the Filipino fighter in their super bantamweight unification bout on Tuesday, Dec. 26 at the Ariake Arena in Japan.
Having a hard time finding opening against Tapales’ solid defense, Inoue unloaded a familiar firepower on a pair of explosive combinations – the last of which punctuated by a hard right cross that seemed to have landed on the Filipino’s guard but did enough damage to send him down to the mat at the 1:02 mark of the round.
Tapales, as brave as his stand in the first nine rounds, tried to muster all his energy to get back up but still failed to beat the count allowing Inoue to wrest the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Association crowns and add to his own World Boxing Council and World Boxing Organization belts.
With the masterful win, Inoue underlined his meteoric rise to boxing greatness after becoming only the second man – behind Terrence Crawford – to go undisputed in two weight classes, just a year after also unifying all the belts in the 118 lbs. division.
Inoue remained undefeated with a 26-0 record with 23 knockouts while the gallant Tapales fell to a 37-4 slate with 19 KOs.
While Inoue, as expected by many, came out winning by way of knockout, it wasn’t as sensational and thrilling as his previous fights largely due to the pride of Lanao Del Norte also giving the Japanese champion some sweat.
The Filipino southpaw did go down twice, the first in the fourth round following a left hook that staggered him and a barrage of follow ups from Inoue, but Tapales easily shrugged it off and even went on the offensive in the ensuing rounds, occasionally landing good, solid upper cuts and body shots on the Japanese star.
The corner of Tapales also made some good adjustments midway, veering away from the high guard defense and went for a shoulder roll stance to avoid some big hits which, at times, frustrated the Japanese champion.
Inoue, however, simply had too much firepower and wore Tapales down like a tree trunk with whistling body shots before delivering the pair of combinations that proved to be too much for Tapales to overcome.
