Can Naoya Inoue surpass the achievements of Masahiko Harada?

Inoue slaughtered 3 consecutive world class opponents in under a combined 4 rounds with one bout throwing a single feint and a single peach of a shot.

No one ever mentions this absolutely insane fact. This is a greater feat than beating Jofre.

 

Unlikely. You could argue that even an aged Donaire is as good a win for Inoue as say, Kingpetch was for Harada...But those two wins over Jofre make him hard to topple.

 

What if Inoue beats Donaire, Casimero, Fulton, and Akhmadliev?

 

That's a whole lot of "pretty good", but you need a metric ****-ton of "pretty good" to parallel "ATG".

 

Inoue is almost there. He is still young and currently in his prime years, but already facing shortage of opponents.

He doesn't need to unify since the business of unification is complicated and many times political. There is only one opponent left that I expect him to face in bantamweight, which is, Casimero. After that, his job is finished there and should go up.

 

FWIW, here is the BoxRec top-ten all-time as of now:

1. Naoya Inoue
2. Takashi Uchiyama
3. Masahiko Harada
4. Masao Ohba
5. Shinsuke Yamanaka
6. Toshiaki Nishioka
7. Kuniaki Shibata
8. Kazuto Ioka
9. Hiroyuki Ebihara
10. Hiroshi Kobayashi

Guys like Jiro Watanabe and Hozumi Hasegawa on the bubble just missing out. Obviously a flawed list besides just jumping the gun on having the Monster as the archipelago's GOAT. As much as I loved God's Left, Speed King and The Tortoise, none of them should be over Ioka or arguably a couple of others listed. That isn't recency bias on the part of some BR editor though; that's all the product of their computerized points ranking system. Which would in theory mean that Inoue's résumé is his country's strongest ever already - but that is objectively false. Flawed system, which we have always known.

 

With years like this one he will not even come close.

 

We noticed.

 

This feels you're just using boxrec and not including the context of his career because you know very little about it. Why does ko% matter when talking about greatness? Do you not consider Kid Gavilan great because of his low ko%?

 

The iteration of Fighting Harada that handed an all-universe flamethrower Jofre his only two professional losses was not lacking in punch resistance in any way. That iteration of Harada was more than a match for any puny manling you wish to champion...and had considerably better CCA to boot.

I said what I said.

 

The opposition isn't really there at bantam, super bantam, or feather. He had a chance of building a legacy upon the bones of Estrada, Gonzalez, and Wangek but he grew out of that division. Donaire is a great scalp but he needs more and though Rigondeaux used to be stellar, he's much too old now to offer anything but a name to Inoue's ledger.

 

The guy with the sub 30% ko rate would knock you out too.