There came a point where Naoya Inoue knew he would set his sights on a fourth weight division.

His team wanted to make sure the move meant something.

“My goal was never just to move up in weight. It was always to create history,” Inoue told BoxingScene.com.

Two fights and another undisputed championship waiting in the wings would suggest mission accomplished.

All four major titles and the lineal championship are at stake in his December 26 showdown versus fellow unified junior featherweight titlist Marlon Tapales (37-3, 19KOs). The historic bout will stream live Tuesday on Lemino in Japan and on ESPN+ in the U.S. from Ariake Arena in Tokyo.

A win will see Yokohama’s Inoue (25-0, 22KOs) create more history, becoming Japan’s first-ever two-division undisputed champion. He will have done so just 54 weeks after he became the first Asian fighter to fully unify all four major titles in a division after his eleventh-round knockout of Paul Butler at this very venue last December.

The same location saw the sport’s top pound-for-pound fighter become the first boxer from Japan to become a unified champion at two more weights, just one fight later. Inoue earned the WBC and WBO 122-pound titles in a brutally one-sided, eighth-round knockout of Philadelphia’s Stephen Fulton this past July 25 at Ariake Arena.

The incredible run dates back to his June 2022 rematch versus Nonito Donaire. The two met in a terrific November 2019 battle that saw Inoue unify the IBF and WBA bantamweight titles and win the World Boxing Super Series tournament in front of a sold-out crowd of 22,000 at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan.

Inoue and Donaire returned to that location for their lineal, WBC, WBA and IBF championship unification last June 9, which was considerably less competitive. Inoue scored a spectacular second round knockout in a fight that he knew came on borrowed time at the weight.

“Once we began having more difficulty making weight beginning with the second Donaire fight, I was already thinking about moving up in weight,” admitted Inoue. “I knew I could stay long enough to get the Paul Butler fight to become undisputed but that it would be my last at bantamweight.

“So, it was around the time of the Donaire (rematch), we began to envision what we can accomplish at super bantamweight.”

Inoue is listed by bet365 sportsbook as a healthy -1600 favorite to beat Tapales, a 31-year-old Filipino southpaw and two-division titlist.

A win will see Inoue fully unify two divisions in the four-belt area in quicker time than any other boxer in history. Terence Crawford (40-0, 31KOs) went six years between his undisputed championships at junior welterweight and welterweight. Claressa Shields won every major title at junior middleweight division just 23 months after her April 2019 win over Christina Hammer to become undisputed middleweight champion.

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. X (formerly Twitter): @JakeNDaBox