Naoya Inoue’s Dec. 24 undisputed title defense rescheduled to 2025 after Sam Goodman injury

Naoya Inoue will have to wait a little bit longer to defend his undisputed super bantamweight title.

Inoue’s IBF-ordered mandatory championship bout against Australian challenger Sam Goodman has been rescheduled for Jan. 24 at the Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan, the star boxer confirmed on Friday.

The pair were originally scheduled to collide for all four super bantamweight belts on Dec. 24, however Goodman was cut over his left eye in his final spar for the fight by English boxer Brad Strand.

Strand trains at the Everton Red Triangle gym in Liverpool alongside Peter McGrail, whose fight with Dennis McCann on Dec. 21’s Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury 2 undercard was canceled Friday after McCann returned an adverse finding in a drug test collected by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA).

Goodman received four stitches and was told by doctors that he can’t fight for four weeks. As a result, the IBF No. 1-ranked boxer’s team was forced to rule him out of the Christmas Eve clash.

Code Sports was first with the details of Goodman’s injury.

Inoue previously held the undisputed titles at bantamweight but moved up in July 2023 to challenge for Stephen Fulton’s unified super bantamweight crown. Inoue halted the American in eight rounds in a one-sided contest, and just five months later he took out another unified champion, Marlon Tapales, in the 10th round to become a two-weight undisputed champion.

The 31-year-old made two defenses of his championships in 2024. In May, Inoue was knocked down for the first time in his career but recovered to stop Mexico’s Luis Nery in the sixth round. In September, he delivered a seventh-round knockout of Irishman TJ Doheny.

Goodman became the IBF’s No. 1 challenger after defeating Ra’eese Aleem by a split decision on home territory in July 2023. The Aussie pugilist has kept active with four routine victories since, waiting for his shot at the belts.

Should Inoue get past Goodman in January, there is a queue of fighters waiting to challenge the Japanese pound-for-pound star in 2025. Two of those boxers, WBA No. 1 Murodjon Akhmadaliev and WBC No. 1 Alan Picasso Romero, return to action on Saturday.

Akhmadaliev faces Mexico’s Ricardo Espinoza Franco for the WBA interim title. Should Akhmadaliev and Inoue be victorious in their next bouts, the WBA is expected to order the mandatory defense next.

Picasso meets Yehison Cuello on the Jaime Munguia vs. Bruno Surace undercard. Uncrowned will have round-by-round coverage of that event throughout Saturday night.