Naoya Inoue’s Christmas Eve super-bantamweight world title fight against Sam Goodman in Tokyo is off after the Australian cut his eye in sparring on Saturday.
Goodman hurt his left eye during his final training session before jetting to Japan to face the undisputed champion, the Australian’s promoter and his manager told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.
Inoue’s Ohashi Gym confirmed to AFP that the bout has been postponed.
Goodman, the mandatory challenger for Inoue’s WBO and IBF titles, needed four stitches in the wound and was told he could not fight for four weeks, the newspaper said.
“He’s still going to be great, but we couldn’t let him fight with the cut in 10 days’ time,” his manager Pete Mitrevski said.
Japan’s Inoue, who has a 28-0 record with 25 knockouts, beat Ireland’s TJ Doheny in his most recent defence in Tokyo in September.
The fight against Goodman, who has a 19-0 record with eight KOs, was set to be his last in his homeland before an expected bout in Las Vegas next year.
Inoue was due to be defending his super-bantamweight titles for the third time since he became undisputed champion in December last year.
He is just the second man to become undisputed world champion at two different weights since the four-belt era began in 2004. American Terence Crawford was the first.
