Under the watchful eye of his brother, the 2023 Fighter of the Year, Takuma Inoue kept the pride of his family and his country intact.

In a great performance, Inoue defended his WBA bantamweight belt with a ninth-round stoppage win over Jerwin Ankcajas at the Kokugikan in Tokyo, setting himself up for possible unification bouts with other great names in the division.

Inoue set the pace of the fight in the early going, connecting with power but not in bunches early on, landing straight rights repeatedly on his southpaw Filipino opponent. In the third a straight right by Inoue caught Ancajas coming in and set the tone for what was coming.

In the fourth, Inoue surprisingly neglected the mid-distance range that had paid such good dividends up to that point, and engaged in a phone-booth war in which he ended up on the receiving end of some serious punishment by Ancajas, but both fighters stood their ground even though the Filipino visitor took the round.

The challenger banks a big R4 @JerwinAncajas 💥 pic.twitter.com/cfvCUXH3Ys

— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) February 24, 2024

Emboldened, Ancajas stalked Inoue in the fifth, but the champ had already reverted back to his stick-and-move tactics, moving away from Ancajas’ onslaughts and connecting solidly off the back foot to effectively keep the challenger at bay.

Inoue kept connecting solid single punches in the sixth, failing to land combinations but always connecting with power. In the seventh, feeling that Ancajas was already tiring, Inoue challenged his foe to a toe-to-toe confrontation, putting on a boxing exhibition in the short range.

Ancajas tried to turn the tide in his favor with an old-fashioned attack to the midsection in the eighth, but Inoue pulled the aikido move on him in the ninth and turned the tables on the challenger, dishing out a terrific sequence of no less than four punches to Ancaja’s body to deposit him on the canvas on his knees. Referee Mark Nelson reached the count of ten with Ancajas not even attempting to stand up.

BRUTAL BODY SHOT SEALS THE DEAL 🫢@TakumaInoue_122 x #InoueAncajas pic.twitter.com/cVcrH7pr83

— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) February 24, 2024

Current Ring junior featherweight champ and top pound-for-pound entrant Naoya Inoue quickly jumped into the ring to congratulate his brother.

With the win, the 28-year-old Inoue, rated at No. 7 by The Ring at bantamweight, retains the title he won against Liborio Solis back in April 203 after his brother Naoya had dropped it to move up in weight, and improves to 19-1 (5 knockouts).

Ancajas, a former junior bantamweight titlist who had made nine defenses of his IBF belt before losing it to Argentina’s Fernando Martinez in 2022, slips to 34-4-2 (23 KOs).

Diego M. Morilla has written for The Ring since 2013. He has also written for HBO.com, ESPN.com and many other magazines, websites, newspapers and outlets since 1993. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and an elector for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He has won two first-place awards in the BWAA’s annual writing contest, and he is the moderator of The Ring’s Women’s Ratings Panel. He served as copy editor for the second era of The Ring en Español (2018-2020) and is currently a writer and editor for RingTV.com.

Follow @MorillaBoxing

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