Naoya Inoue has won Ring Magazine’s prestigious Fighter of the Year award for his 2023 campaign which saw the 30-year-old boxer-puncher soundly defeat then-undefeated WBC/WBO 122-pound titleholder Stephen Fulton in July and WBA/IBF 122-pound beltholder Marlon Tapales in December to earn The Ring’s vacant junior featherweight title and undisputed champion status.

Inoue (26-0, 23 KOs) defeated Fulton and Tapales, The Ring’s Nos. 1- and 2-rated junior featherweights at the time, in his first two bouts in the 122-pound division. The Yokohama resident began 2023 as the undisputed bantamweight champion having collected all four 118-pound belts from May 2019 to December 2022. Inoue joined pound-for-pound rival Terence Crawford as the only male two-division undisputed champion of the four-belt era, and he did so in a 12-month span.

The four-division titleholder is the first Japanese boxer to win The Ring’s Fighter of the Year award, and the first Asian boxer to earn the honor since Manny Pacquiao did so in 2006, 2008 and 2009. Ring Magazine has named a Fighter of the Year since 1928 when Gene Tunney won the award.

The January 2024 issue of The Ring will name the winners of the other 2023 awards, including Fight of the Year, KO of the Year, Performance of the Year, Round of the Year, Upset of the Year, Comeback of the Year, Prospect of the Year and Most Inspirational. “The Best of 2023” edition is now live on RingTV.com. Click here to read the issue, and here to subscribe to The Ring.

Naoya Inoue is the first Japanese boxer to win The Ring’s Fighter-of-the-Year honor in the publication’s 95-year history of the prestigious award. (Cover photo by Naoki Fukuda)