Top Rank sign co-promotional deal with Junto Nakatani!

Just moments ago American promotional power house Top Rank announced that they had inked a co-promotional deal with 3-weight world champion Junto Nakatani (28-0, 21) [中谷 潤人], following his recent defense of the WBC Bantamweight title, which he scored against Vincent Astrolabio.

The deal will see Top Rank, headed by Bob Arum promoter Nakatani with Teiken, headed by Akihiko Honda, and M.T. Boxing Gym, run by ​Takeshi Murano, who has been the man who has often been over-looked when it comes to talking about Nakatani.

It's unclear what this means in the immediacy for Nakatani, who was essentially already having his bouts aired on Top Rank broadcasts in the US, along with Amazon Prime in Japan, though it seems likely that Nakatani will be brought over the US to fight, something he has stated he wants to do more often. To date Nakatani has fought twice in the US, scoring a bloody win over Angel Acosta in 2021 and a brutal KO of the Year contender in 2023 against Andrew Moloney, with the win over Moloney being one of the rare title wins for Japanese fighters on US soil.

Longer term however this move makes a potential showdown with fellow Japanese star and current Undisputed Super Bantamweight champion Naoya Inoue (27-0, 24) [井上尚弥] seem almost inevitable, one day down the line, with both now having a working relationship with Top Rank.