Inoue and Niyomtrong Victorious in Tuesday Action in the Orient

Unless you are in the habit of waking up in the morning several hours before dawn, you probably don’t know that Naoya Inoue was in action today in Japan where he successfully defended his WBA/IBF world bantamweight titles with an eighth-round stoppage of Thailand’s Aran Dipaen. Japan’s charismatic Inoue, the baby-faced “Monster” who is on everyone’s top-10 pound-for-pound list, ranking as high as third, advanced his record to 22-0 with his 19^th win by stoppage.

Although title belts were at stake, this was designed as merely a stay-busy fight for Inoue, 28. The unheralded Dipaen, who also competes in Muay Thai, was 12-2 heading in, but against no-name opposition.

Inoue controlled the fight from the opening bell, said a report on Sky. But the Thai invader was no pushover. He “absorbed a series of heavy body blows with little visible impacts,” said an un-bylined report on Yahoo.

Inoue is a murderous body puncher, but it was a pair of left hooks to the face that took the fight out of the hands of the judges. The first, which caught the tiring Dipaen off-balance, produced the bout’s lone knockdown. The second, moments later, forced the referee to intervene. The official time was 2:34 of round eight.

Nonito Donaire, the 39-year-old Filipino who is aging like fine wine, gave Inoue his toughest fight, taking the “Monster” the distance in a 12-round barnburner in November of 2019 in Saitama, Japan. Donaire turned in another sharp performance last week. Inoue-Donaire II would be a very big deal, no matter where it was staged.

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The noted boxing historian Matt McGrain, an authority on boxers in the smallest weight classes, had no hesitation calling Thailand’s Thammanoon Niyomtrong the most accomplished strawweight in the world during the decade 2010-2019. Since then, Niyamtrong, also known as Knockout CP Freshmart, has added three wins to his ledger, improving his record to 23-0 (9).

The third victory came today, a fifth-round stoppage of Robert Paradero in the seaside resort city of Phuket. WBA 105-pound champ Niyomtrong, 31, was making his tenth title defense, the most of any active title-holder.

By all accounts, this was a wild and wooly fight. Paradero came out slugging, according to various reports, and Niyomtrong returned to his corner after the opening stanza with a cut over his left eye. In the fifth round, Niyomtrong knocked him down with a right hand and Paradero, a Filipino who was 18-1 heading in, stumbled and fell several more times before the match was waived off.

Another 105-pound belt-holder wasn’t as fortunate. WBO champion Wilfredo Mendez of Puerto Rico was upset by Masataka Taniguchi today on the undercard of Naoya-Dipaen. Taniguchi prevailed on an 11^th-round stoppage.

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