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Philippines, 17 Sep 2024 |
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Is Casimero Inoue's TOTGA? By Teodoro Medina Reynoso PhilBoxing.com Wed, 11 Sep 2024  TOTGA, the one that got away. I never thought this romantic term can also be used in boxing. But really, there has been few that slipped through the cracks on the way of Naoya Inoue's growing HOF even ATG career. There's Roman Chocolatito Gonzalez and Juan Francisco Estrada at super flyweight and Murodjon Akhmadaliev and Johnriel Casimero at super bantamweight. There were narratives that Inoue avoided confrontations with Gonzalez and Estrada, choosing to move up to bantamweight after winning the WBO super flyweight crown from Omar Narvaez. But according to Wiki, Inoue's camp offered Gonzalez to fight Naoya in a unification but Chocolatito allegedly turned down the offer for not being attractive enough. In the case of Estrada, he was already the mandatory challenger for Inoue's WBO title but instead went the WBC way where he won the title from Gonzalez and the two fought two times more, totally shutting out any meeting with Inoue at super flyweight. Due to the foregoing, neither of Gonzalez nor Estrada could qualify as Inoue's TOTGA, at least at 115 lbs. When Inoue moved to the bantamweight and became unified IBF and WBA champion after beating Emmanuel Rodriguez and Nonito Donaire, Bob Arum planned to bring him back to the US for a grand reintroduction to American fans by pitting him against Johnriel Casimero. Himself a reputed little monster by knocking out the highly regarded Zolani Tete for the WBO crown, Casimero was supposed to meet Inoue in a high profile triple title unification set for April 2020 in Las Vegas. But March 2020 saw the start of the Covid 19 pandemic that forced a stoppage to most human activities, including boxing, worldwide. Even then, Casimero and his camp, already in the US as early as February decided to stay and hoped for the pandemic to boil over and boxing to return to the US for the fight with Inoue to push through in a new date. True enough, the pandemic eased down and boxing began to return to normal by June-July of 2020. However, both Arum and Inoue seemed to have a change of mind. In a press release, Arum said due to the pandemic constraints, he had asked Inoue to take a pay cut to which Inoue allegedly agreed. Arum said he will ask Casimero to do the same within a deadline after which he will be forced to replace him with another opponent for Inoue. But per account of Casimero, Arum never approached or communicated with his camp. They were shocked to learn from the media a few days later that Johnriel had been replaced by Australian Jason Moloney as Inoue's foe. The rest as we say is history--- whether or not Inoue had an active part in Arum preventing his supposed clash with Johnriel. Since then Casimero has needled Inoue short of accusing him of ducking. Johnriel even refused to recognize Inoue's The Monster alias calling him Japanese Turtle instead. Inoue reportedly got riled by the disrespect even at one point calling for "somebody to organize the fight". But as events went, their respective episodes at bantamweight closed without any fight being made. Now both are at super bantamweight with Inoue as undisputed world champion and Casimero as among the leading contenders. Yet any confrontation between the two seems farthest from realization. Not with another possible Inoue TOTGA still in the way--- Uzbekistan's Morudjon Akhmadaliev, the former unified titlist and current WBA mandatory challenger who Arum and Inoue chose to ignore in favor of another chosen fall guy. I will not be surprised that when Inoue's career is over and done, it will be marked by an asterisk. And that will be his failure or refusal to fight Casimero, his greatest TOTGA. Though the truth is, it is Inoue who is the one who keeps on getting away. The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477. Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.  |
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