Is Naoya Inoue The GOAT If He Becomes Undisputed At 122 And 126?

Does height matter much for p4p GOAT status? The consensus GOAT, SRR, dwarfed pretty much all of his opponents. Nobody calls Qawi the p4p GOAT just because he was 5'5 1/2 and champ at 190. Who do you have as the p4p GOAT? Besides Armstrong and Pacquiao, the common names usually dwarfed their opponents. Even Louis was typically the bigger man. Inoue has generally been at a larger height disadvantage than most of the people in the GOAT argument.

 

Nah, He'll need to jump up and take on some house hold names. Lomachenko or Shakur Stevenson and win.Navarette a good start. Someone that can hit back with mustard and my favorito Mexicano tortilla.

To me belts are BS! You can get them via beating a buttler or Mcdonalds. Looks good on paper eh not that good if you break it down...It's a gimme via good careful match making by managers. To date his best win is Cool boy Donito Nonaire.

Pacquiao went back to back to back against. Marquez and Morales and Barrera and Margarito. Murderous row of elite Mexicans! Nothin was a given gift belt. Nonoya went Donayri (39) then Fulzom.Then he has another easy belt. Tapales. Quadro alas is right hurrr. Holla!!

 

Jumping weights and fighting above your natural weight and beating bigger men always helps in regards to a fighters standing. Would people think Pac and Armstrong were as great as they are regarded now if they did not fight and beat bigger men?

Inoue at 5'5 has the frame to be a decent sized featherweight. He already out grew 118 as he failed to make weight in his last outing there, he has to be seen now as a true 122llbs fighter not a small one who bulked up to face bigger men like Pac did and Loma does. Give him a another couple of years to fill out and he'll probably be a natural featherweight, so him fighting and beating similar sized men who won't out weigh him by much if at all isn't that big a deal when compared to Pac beating guys with 15-20lbs on him come fight night.

 

Agreed, belts are near meaningless, even if you have more than one belt, it's more important who you beat than how many titles you have, because it's easier than ever now to be a title holder with so many sanctioning bodies deemed legit and some of them with more than one world champion in a weight class. You can be a champion now and not even be top 5 in your own division or be undisputed and not even top 10 or even top 20 P4P.

Inoue needs those big names and they are at above 126, there's nobody at 122 or 126 who he can beat that will really add as much to his legacy as a win over the likes of Haney, Davis, Loma and Stevenson.

 

In the categories he fought hes already one of best ever. No doubts.

 

Greatest of all-time in certain divisions? Absolutely. Of all time? I gets stinky whenever General proclaims greatest of all-time fighters. The real top candidates were virtuosos in times when numerous current divisions were combined, purging their contenders in fire of intense, poverty and culturally driven competition for the single belt. Armstrong, Charles, Robinson. Insane resumes.

You Tube debates babbling about number of title holders beaten by Mayweather and Pacquiao never mention the fact that many current strap holders and so called champions wouldn't fit into the top 5-10 of some older divisions.

That being said, Inoue is special on the scale of time. His undoing might be inability to find iconic wins, having to rely on mind-numbing statistics of KO's, title fights, won rounds. I sincerely hope he can move up further and do just that and more.

 

The GOAT is a super high standard, and I personally think that term is thrown around a little too often (not just in boxing, but in almost all sports recently). But if Inoue pulled this off, I think it would make him the GOAT of the past 25 years or so and put him ahead of Floyd and Pac.

 

If he pulled it off, what is his best win on his resume? 37 year old Donito Nonaire. Floyd and Pac each have 10 wins better than that.

I would put Inoue as the GOAT if he goes up to 135 and beats all of the guys in that division.

 

That’s a fair point but how many weight classes were Floyd and Pac undisputed in? That’s one of the main measures of greatness to a lot of boxing fans. Floyd could have at least been undisputed once if he’d fought Brook instead of Berto, but he didn’t. Plus Inoue has fought a lot of top guys who are still in their primes; it’s just that they aren’t very well known because of the light weight classes they fight in and most not being from the US.