Knuckle Down Preview: Naoya Inoue vs. Jason Moloney

Jason ‘Mayhem’ Moloney 21-1 (18) faces the toughest assignment in boxing when he takes on WBA, IBF and Ring Magazine champion Naoya ‘Monster’ Inoue 19-0 (16) at ‘The Bubble’ at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday night.

Inoue’s credentials are well known. The undefeated 27-year-old Japanese phenom has rolled through his opposition in his eight-year pro career, picking up versions of the world title in the junior flyweight, super flyweight and bantamweight divisions.

In his last outing Inoue had a tougher than expected fight against Filipino veteran Nonito Donaire who troubled the champion at times and fractured his orbital bone in the final of the World Boxing Super Series.

How much that grueling battle took out of Inoue remains to be seen.

On the other side of the coin is the tenacious Moloney. The 29-year-old Australian has bowled over all but one opponent since turning pro six years ago. The only blemish on his record is a 12-round split decision loss to then-IBF champion Emmanuel Rodriguez in the quarterfinals of the World Boxing Super Series two years ago.

Inoue knocked out the Puerto Rican in two rounds in the semi-finals of the tournament seven months later.

Some pundits might look to these results with a common opponent to pencil in an Inoue win. But styles make fights and boxing history is littered with underdogs shining under the bright lights.

Read on as we breakdown this thrilling matchup, knuckle down style.

Anthony: A win over Inoue for Jason Moloney would be one of the best away wins for an Australian fighter since Jeff Harding beat Dennis Andries in 1989 or even right back to when Lionel Rose beat the great Fighting Harada in Japan in 1968. That’s how much of a task he’s up against and that’s how much a win would mean.

Inoue has barely put a foot wrong throughout his career. He had a bit of a tough one last time out against Nonito Donaire, but if you look at what he has achieved across his whole career, well, he deserves his nickname ‘The Monster’.

For Jason, he’s going to have to do just about everything right to win. But he has had Inoue in his sights for a number of years and is going to fancy his chances.

I went back and watched Inoue’s last five fights, which admittedly didn’t take me that long apart from his last fight against Nonito Donaire. Much of my focus was on the first six or eight rounds of the Donaire fight when a lot of questions got asked, but many of them were answered through the back half of the fight.

If there are secrets – I wouldn’t go as far as to say a blueprint – but if there are secrets in how to beat Inoue and hang with him and make his time in the ring difficult, I think that’s really the fight to focus on.

Zack: What are some of the strengths and weakness you saw that were answered by Inoue later in the Donaire fight that you first really noticed?

Anthony: They always say you don’t hook with a hooker, but Donaire has a deadly left hook of his own and certainly made good use of that in the first half of the fight. I thought his bodywork not only served to trouble Inoue in the first six, seven, eight rounds, but it also seemed to take the jab away from him. Everyone knows Inoue has rare power, but it’s not uncommon for him to throw 40 jabs a round. That jab was missing for much of the first half of the fight and I think a lot of that was from not knowing where the shots from Donaire were coming from, being troubled by the body shots and overthinking how to reply. In the later rounds when he got back on his stick he was able to break the rhythm of Donaire and catch him with power shots in the back half of the fight.

Zack: I took a little bit of a different approach. I obviously watched the Donaire fight, but I also watched the Kohei Kono fight from 2016. I know that was from awhile ago, but I thought that fight was relevant and I also watched a couple of other early super flyweight bouts just to try to get a gauge of his evolution. One of the things I noticed, perhaps a little conversely, is that as he moved through the weights and perhaps got a little more notoriety on the world scene, he seems to have gone away from his jab, especially in the last two years in his bantamweight run. Do you reckon that is just a factor because he is fighting bigger guys and using other tools, or what do you attribute that too?

Anthony: That’s a really good question and I hadn’t given that too much thought to be honest. It could be, and it could just be a bit of a case of him falling in love with his power a little bit. And he certainly has carried his power up with him to bantamweight so there’s no problem there. But I certainly think when he’s at his best he is throwing those power shots behind the jab and that’s what gets him those openings and opportunities.

Zack: I did notice with the jab in the Donaire fight in round nine when the Filipino hurt him with the right hand, it didn’t even seem like Inoue was really even trying to set anything up with it. Inoue threw that real sort of lazy jab and Donaire had been reading it all night. He really sort of crushed him with that right hand and really rocked Inoue. I was impressed that Inoue could take a shot like that from a vaunted power puncher – admittedly more with the left hook that the right hand – but still a big shot from a guy who has fought as high as featherweight. I just found it interesting that Inoue’s jab has gone away. The super flyweight version and even the junior flyweight version when he first started, there’s definitely been an evolution and he’s definitely gotten better at things, but he seems to have left some things back in the tool shed too for whatever reason.

Anthony: If there was wake-up fight for Inoue to go back and start looking at things that perhaps he had taken for granted, it was the Donaire fight. The one thing I imagine he would’ve be working on over the past almost 12 months is getting that stick back into his game.

Zack: It’s very hard to pick holes in Inoue and we could be accused of clutching at straws here, but that was one thing I noticed during my research. But if he comes out the same way and we’ve noticed it, I’m sure Jason and his team have noticed it as well because they always do their homework and come in prepared. I think we’ll be able to tell very early in the first round which Inoue is coming to the table, especially with the way he is using that jab from the jump.

Now you touched on Donaire’s pressure in the fight and the way he approached the fight, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on why you felt he was successful and if similar tactics could work for Moloney?

Anthony: Inoue loves to punch at that mid-range. You’ve either got to be right outside or right inside. I’m not sure that Inoue had that genuine inside game and that’s where I think Moloney can have some success. I liked the way Donaire committed to those shots on the inside and didn’t second guess himself. He got in on the inside then got right back on the outside when he got his work done. The challenge of course is navigating your way out when you’re in Inoue’s kill zone. But that’s a style that I think suits Jason Moloney. He showed it well against Emmanuel Rodriguez in the back half of their fight and he showed it again in his last fight against Leonardo Baez over in Las Vegas in June.

In the Rodriguez fight I thought he stayed on the outside a little too long in those early rounds, but once he started committing to getting inside and banging home those body shots, he really took the legs away from the IBF champion.

Inoue likes to throw that right hand around the guard rather than straight down the pike so if Moloney can step inside that shot I think there’s an opportunity there to do some real damage in close.

Zack: What I found interesting going back and watching the fight against is that Donaire, Rodriguez and Kono all tried to put pressure on Donaire, but they all did it in three different ways. And interestingly enough, the biggest guy and the one you would think would be the most powerful and the most able to take the incoming fire was Rodriguez and he had the most devastating loss.

To me it looked like Rodriguez was happy to work his way into a position to push Inoue back, get in front of him and them almost pot-shot with him. He seemed to back his size advantage, his strength advantage and probably what he perceived as his power advantage.

Obviously, that did not work. As you mentioned, that left hook at mid-distance from Inoue is just deadly. It’s so fast. Everyone must know it’s coming but no-one can see it because he just catches guys all the time with it.

I think that style of forward momentum pressure obviously was the least successful, but I really liked what Kohei Kono tried to do. I thought he had really good spots in that fight. He landed shots in different ways against Inoue just by using that forward pressure, but ultimately I think he was just too small and there was a massive class differential.

The difference with Donaire and why he had so much success compared to Rodriguez and Kono is because he has the size. He has fought at the higher weights and is used to power punchers, and maybe Inoue is the hardest puncher he has ever fought even up at featherweight, but at least he was more accustomed to being hit by bigger, stronger, sturdier guys, so I think that worked in his favour.

But what I really liked about Donaire is that he didn’t just walk forward Rodriguez style. The whole time he was either threatening with the left hand, he was feinting a lot, and I know you’re a big fan of foot feints and little changes of angles which I thought Donaire did really, really well from the get-go.

He also copied Inoue’s footwork a little bit, whereas Inoue even at the lighter weights would use this quarter backstep, going two forward, one back, one forward, one left, one forward. They’re always changing the angle in front of each other. I thought Donaire did that really well. He did the same thing that Inoue normally does to other guys.

I’m not 100% sure if that’s what disrupted Inoue’s jab or if he just kind of got away from it altogether with the power, but I thought it was such a great way of being able to put that forward pressure on Inoue in the first six rounds but also take a couple of his tools away at the same time while also making him think.

Anthony: You’re absolutely right. That’s what Donaire did so well, he manoeuvred Inoue around the ring and made him second guess himself for the first half or eight rounds of the fight with those feints, lateral movement and that good variety in attack. He really got Inoue thinking. Once Donaire got into his rhythm in there he really had Inoue second-guessing himself.

Zack: Let’s move on to Jason Moloney. I think Jason’s close loss to Rodriguez only forced him to get better. He fought three times in the following year against the best competition he could get at the time. He’s more familiar with the Top Rank ‘bubble’ over there after facing a big guy in Leonardo Baez in June, who admittedly didn’t have the skills or the speed or the class of Inoue, but he’s a big dude who could hit pretty hard. Inoue hits harder than him in a lot of different ways, but I thought that could be a potential banana peel for Jason, especially so recently after his twin brother Andrew’s loss to Joshua Franco two days previously. With all that in his mind, I thought he looked the best he’s ever looked. I think he is a much better fighter now than the version of himself that fought Rodriguez. And Inoue is coming off a career-long layoff, a whole year, and that orbital injury. He has fought in America before three years ago, probably in one of his more lacklustre fights against Antonio Nieves, but he hasn’t fought over there during this coronavirus pandemic as Jason did it a few months ago. Jason’s familiarity with the environment combined with his recent activity has to stand him in better stead.

Anthony: I think that loss to Rodriguez has only helped Jason. Sometimes having those close losses only serves to help boxers sharpen up their tools and let them know they belong at the world class level. Speaking of the Baez fight, you can’t fault Jason’s mental toughness. Baez was a late replacement and Jason had all the pressure in the world on him after Andrew’s loss two days earlier. To be able to focus on the task at hand and out-Mexican the Mexican spoke volumes about his intestinal fortitude.

Also having been in the ‘bubble’ before, having been in those circumstances, is only going to give Jason more confidence. He knows the protocols, he knows how things work. Nothing will be a surprise. It’s the little things that take you out of your game; when you travel overseas it might be the different sounds of the birds singing outside your window. That won’t be a problem for Moloney. It’s the one-percenters that give athletes the edge at the top level and all of these things are going to come into play on Saturday night.

Zack: What can Jason do exploit some these – albeit small – opportunities Inoue will give him? As far as a gameplan goes, what would you like to see from Moloney?

Anthony: Even though it was an entirely different fighter, I think that in the fight against Baez, Jason showed a lot of things to like. I thought he used his jab fantastically from the outside, picked his moments to get inside where he was the stronger man in close, both with his punching power but more specifically with his physicality. I think a similar approach can work with Inoue. Again, I would like to see him using those feints. Feint, feint and feint some more. Keep that variety in attack from the outside and pick your spots to move inside. And when you’re in there, lean on the bloke. Hit him to the body, hit him to the hip. Wear him down with the rough stuff. I don’t think that’s something Inoue is accustomed to. Rough him up on the inside. If you’re in there, make it count. Push him backwards, tire out his legs, work his body and see how he goes off the backfoot. Throws those short chopping shots in close and either wait for the ref to break it or make sure you’ve got a clean exit out of there because you don’t want to get caught by an Inoue bomb pulling straight back.

Zack: I think you’re right. At the three distances there’s clearly an advantage for Inoue at mid-range, whereas Jason can use the outside to his advantage with the timing and space to set things up and make them happen, whether that’s combination punching or closing the distance with explosive combinations. With Inoue, I wouldn’t say that inside distance is where he is worst; rather, he seems to be less dangerous there.

The Baez fight might’ve been a little bit of a precursor for Moloney. Maybe his team knew what we didn’t. Maybe they knew they had a little opportunity to face Inoue down the line, so let’s try a few things out in this fight because he did spend a lot of time on the inside. Maybe they were using that fight and those rounds to test things out and get more comfortable. So I really think getting to that inside distance and getting there safely is the key for Jason.

For a full breakdown of Inoue vs Moloney, check out The Unofficial Scorecard podcast here: podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/ep-28-knuckle-down-slaying-the-monster-inoue-v-moloney/id1417204298?i=1000495752407