Former World Heavyweight Champion Naoya Inoue vs. Fulton,” predicted by a hometown former world heavyweight champion who knows the champion well.

The day is approaching when Naoya Inoue, 30, will challenge for the WBC/WBO super bantamweight title. The champion, Stephen Fulton Jr. is 28 years old, born on July 17, 1994. He was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Philadelphia is home to boxing, as Sylvester Stallone made it the setting for the “Rocky” film series. The city’s most famous boxer was Muhammad Ali’s rival, Joe Frazier, who became a gold medalist at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and rose to the top of the world as a professional boxer.

But Frazier was not a native Philadelphian; he was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1944 and came to Philadelphia, the first capital of modern America, “to be somebody,” at age 15. And while working in a meatpacking plant, he emerged as a professional boxer.

There is a scene in which Rocky Balboa hits a hunk of meat hanging from the ceiling like a sandbag, but for what it’s worth, Frazier is the model. Today, Philadelphia is home to all four major U.S. sports and all of their teams, and their home ballparks and arenas are adjacent to each other. A statue of Frazier stands in one of those corners.

Frazier, who passed away on November 7, 2011, at the age of 67, built his own gym in Philadelphia and lived on the second floor of it during his final years. Tim Witherspoon, 14 years younger than Frazier, was selected as Ali’s sparring partner as a young boxer. Witherspoon believes that emulating Frazier’s head-slip technique improved his defensive skills.