The US has produced the greatest fighters in the history of the sport. Japan isn't even remotely in the discussion.
For a long time the US and Mexico were the only places where it was a major sport. To be fair, it has never been a major sport in Japan
There's certainly some truth to that. Nevertheless the current more globalized era in the sport hasn't produced talent that in any way supplants previous American greats.
US, Mexico, PR, the UK have been the biggest boxing countries for decades whereas it's only been just very recently that Japan has had an increase in talent and world champions these past few years. Not fair to make the comparison given how much bigger the sport was in those countries compared to boxing in Japan, which wasn't considered a popular sport even when they had their known champions like Fighting Harada, Guts Ishimatsu, and Joichiro Tatsuyoshi around. Give it some time and perhaps there will be even more talented fighters and champs coming out of Japan, especially now that Inoue and Nakatani have helped boost boxing's popularity over there.
It's Inoue clearly for me given his consistency, dominance, title wins and weight jumps. Although I will say that Loma has fought better competition than Inoue. It's just a shame that circumstances have cheated Loma out of being greater. Fighters that have avoided him (Tank, Garcia) and judges screwing him over (Salido, Haney). No one would argue Loma having a stronger case had he actually officially won those fights on the judges scorecards.
Not an unreasonable take. If Japan in 30 years is on par with Puerto Rico, given the great fighters the latter has produced historically, it will be a remarkable achievement. I wouldn't hold my breath, however, waiting for Japan to match the US.
US will always be at the top because there's more US boxers fighting in almost every weight classes while Japan has mostly been dominant in the lower weight classes. Thus far Japan has 3 fighters in the IBHOF, mainly fighters who have fought in the 60s and 70s at Light Flyweight to Bantamweight (Fighting Harada, Masao Ohba, Yoko Gushiken). And even right now future HOFers like Naoya Inoue and Kazuto Ioka are fighting at the lower weights. Sad to say we're not going to ever expect Japan to produce as many great fighters as US or Mexico historically speaking but at least we'll be seeing more future champions and potential greats coming from Japan in the future now that it's rising in talent.
There so much nonsense here, stuff which is self-explanatory, or which I have already explained in depth many times including in the very thread that it's complete waste of my time unpacking it all It's not the Loma fans who attack Inoue and try to discredit him it's always been the reverse for some weird reason. Whilst Loma is my favourite, I love both fighters and I would never have uttered a bad word about Inoue in a million years had the Inoue fans not had this agenda against Loma trying to discredit him to prop up Inoue. The irony is they're both fighters who, at the least, every fan should respect even if they dislike them for some inexplicable reason or don't enjoy their styles or watching them fight People keep hurling rocks over the fence without provocation, I'm going to hurl them right back over with interest and if they keep persisting with it I'm going to jump right over the fence and things are going to get real, figuratively speaking
It's not simply a function of numbers. Any list of the greatest fighters in history will invariably include a disproportionate number of African-Americans. Yet black fighters represent a small fraction of the American population, to say nothing of the global population. As long as black Americans continue to participate in the sport, that isnt going to change, irrespective of what the Japanese do or don't do.