Naoki Inoue looks to extend his reign as RIZIN bantamweight champion when he faces off with DEEP titleholder Ryuya Fukuda at Super RIZIN 4, which goes down Sunday morning in Saitama, Japan
Plus, Inoue would also introduce him to international viewers as one of the world’s best bantamweights and open doors for bigger challenges out there.
“My dream fight would be fighting the current UFC bantamweight champion,” Inoue told MMA Fighting through a translator. “However, right now the current bantamweight champion is Merab [Dvalishvili] and I used to train him with him, so I don’t really want to call him out because we know each other, we trained together. But my dream is to fight the toughest guy out there, which would be the UFC bantamweight champion. That’s one thing that I would definitely want to try. Or anybody out there in title contention.”
Inoue fought twice in the UFC back in 2018, when he was still competing as a flyweight, defeating Carls John de Tomas and losing to Matt Schnell.
“There are a lot of tough guys in the PFL,” Inoue said. “I’ve also liked to face Sergio Pettis. He also fought in RIZIN once, I think that would be a fun matchup. There’s a lot of tough guys out there that I’d want to fight.”
Winning a champion vs. champion clash with Fukuda would be huge for RIZIN’s local aspirations, but Inoue is also willing to face non-Japanese talent in the future. RIZIN stars Kleber Koike and Roberto Satoshi told MMA Fighting in the past they feel like representing RIZIN in those situations, but Inoue looks at it from a different perspective.
“I’ve always wanted to fight international tough competition to continue to challenge myself,” Inoue said. “Obviously, it seems like Kleber and Satoshi both have a strong feeling where they want to protect and defend Japan or, you know, defend RIZIN and fight for RIZIN in a way. But, for me, if I could be extremely selfish, I want to fight tough fighters for myself. I want to face tougher competition, tougher international competition, to raise my abilities. And if that leads to proving RIZIN is number one, that’s great, it works out. But for me, I have more of a selfish mentality. I do this for myself and I want tough competition to raise my abilities.
“I believe RIZIN is the No. 1 organization in Japan, and the RIZIN champion should be the best in Japan. That’s a no-brainer. That’s my mentality. In recent times, there has been some tougher international competition, international fighters coming into the RIZIN bantamweight division. With all that said, my plan is to continue to be the champion and continue to prove that RIZIN has the best fighters not only in Japan, but they can go against the international world competition as well.”
The 28-year-old talent remains focused on the task ahead this weekend, looking to go 10-2 inside the RIZIN ring with a second successful title defense after beating Soo Chul Kim and Yuki Motoya to win and defend the belt. Fukuda is 25-8-1 in the sport, and also 9-2 in his home promotion, but already holds a perfect 3-0 under the RIZIN banner with a trio of stoppages over Masayuki Watanabe, Erson Yamamoto and Ryusei Ashizawa.
“He has been finished very few times,” Inoue said of Fukuda. “Obviously I’ve been training to finish him. I’ve been working on some situations where I can finish him, submit him. I have game plans where I can edge him out by a decision. I’ve been working on various situations against Fukuda. But as you have mentioned, he’s a very tough fighter and he’s been finished very few times. I’ve been analyzing the fight where he actually got finished, trying to look for his weak spots. I’ve been studying him a lot. I can fight him wherever the fight takes it and I’m gonna try to finish him.”
