Imagine the worst situation”…Close to Naoya Inoue! Junjin Nakatani, challenging for the 3rd bantam title, “The difference between a monster and a monster”.

Nakatani is 26-0 with 19 KOs, while Santiago, from Tijuana, Mexico, is 28-0 (14 KOs) with 3 losses and 5 knockouts. He fought Nonito Donaire, who had two fights with Inoue, for the WBC bantamweight title vacated by Naoya Inoue’s return last July, and won by a 3-0 decision. He is a short, 159cm tall fighter with a lot of horsepower. He has a style that allows him to overwhelm his opponents with his hands without backing down. Nakatani will be Santiago’s opponent in his first defense.

Nakatani said.

Santiago is the type of fighter who goes in and out, and when he gets to his own distance, his hands come out loudly. I expect him to be hard to hit with punches. My team’s approach is to prepare for difficult opponents by imagining the worst-case scenario. I practice by imagining situations where I could get caught in a mess at his distance.”

Like a Mexican, Santiago likes to strike. Two of his three defeats came in the sixth round, when he was still developing, and his third loss in November 2009 was also a winnable one.

I have no problem if I control the ring and get into close fights, but I definitely don’t want to fall apart and end up in the opponent’s ring. I will apply firm pressure and chip away. I won the belts in the flyweight and super flyweight divisions by decision, but this time I will enter the ring as a challenger. I feel good because I can have a sense of urgency in the form of a ‘challenge.

After the sparring session, I asked Nakatani to reflect on the four rounds he went through that day.

As Rudy told me, I worked on timing my moves. I tried to do it from a closer distance and from a farther distance. I was conscious of the speed of my back and forth movements.

My sparring partner today was the type who spends a lot of time standing still and does things with a backward center of gravity. Since we couldn’t start if we were to work together and watch each other, I decided to put pressure on him and break him down little by little. I also tried to hit his gloves with light punches to try to get more moves.

In the third round, my theme was to sit back, lower my center of gravity, and throw uppercuts. He doesn’t attack easily, so I dared to lower my guard to let him hit me. But of course, I kept my guard high when I was in range to get punched. It would have been unbearable if Santiago hit me with a barrage of punches (laughs). I tried to control the fight by switching between offense and defense.

In the fourth round, I was told to do what I wanted to do, so I watched my opponent’s condition and tried to be precise when I had to close in. The theme throughout was to “just make moves. I feel that I am more sharp and faster than I was last week when this camp started. Now I just have to get my timing in my head.”