Stephen Fulton vs Naoya Inoue Preview

The world of boxing has an early-week bout to savour on Tuesday as Stephen Fulton and Naoya Inoue will clash for the unified WBC and WBO world titles in Japan. The fight will be shown live on Sky Sports at 9:30am GMT.

We preview the eagerly anticipated bout below.

Stephen Fulton

Beginning with the champion, Fulton has been the unified super bantamweight title holder for just under two years having landed the WBO belt in January 2021 against Angelo Leo and the WBC crown against Brandon Figueroa in November 2021.

Since then, the 29-year-old has defended his unified championship once on June 4th, 2022 against Daniel Roman, the then-number one ranked WBO super-bantamweight contender, a fight that Fulton won by a wide-margin unanimous decision.

That victory marked his 21st success from 21 fights; 10 of which were decided by unanimous decision with eight knockouts and three majority decisions.

Despite the undefeated nature of Fulton’s professional career, the man from the United States is the outsider to win tomorrow’s contest at 10/3 with William Hill, and Fulton to win by any decision is bigger at 9/2.

Interestingly, of his last three fights won via KO or TKO, all of them occurred in the second half of the bout; tomorrow, he is 20/1 to repeat that feat whereas his opponent is 5/2 to do the same.

Naoya Inoue

As predicted by many coming into tomorrow’s fight, Inoue is the 2/9 favourite to take Fulton’s WBO and WBC super-bantamweight titles in his home country of Japan.

Nicknamed ‘The Monster’, the 30-year-old has a glittering cabinet of career highlights from both his time in the professional and amateur sphere.

Since the start of 2018, Inoue has been competing in the bantamweight division after his mountain of success in the super flyweight and light flyweight divisions previously.

His first fight at 118 pounds was against WBA ‘Regular’ bantamweight champion Jamie McDonnell, who had held the belt for four years, in Japan on May 25th, 2018.

McDonnell was intending to move up in weight class in 2018 to super bantamweight, but the challenge of Inoue kept him in the division long enough to be easily defeated as the referee waved off the fight and declared the hometown hero the TKO victor.

Eight wins later, seven of which by either KO or TKO, and via a spell in the World Boxing Super Series, the 24-fight unbeaten boxer arrives at Tuesday’s bout in good form having won the WBO bantamweight title at the end of 2022 in an 11-round thriller.

Thanks to his electric record of 21 knockouts from 24 victories, William Hill has the Japanese athlete priced at 4/5 to win by KO, TKO, or DQ whereas he is much bigger at 9/4 to go the full distance and claim success via decision or technical decision.

Furthermore, of his 24 bouts, just under half (11) have ended within the first four rounds and if you fancy him to do something similar this week, he is 5/1 to stop the contest within the first third.

Check out all the latest boxing betting odds at William Hill