The Ring's junior featherweight champion Naoya Inoue has called on Junto Nakatani to face him next after ruling out a move to featherweight in May.

The undisputed 122-pound king made no mistakes as he widely outpointed previously undefeated Alan Picasso in the main event of The Ring V: Night of the Samurai event at Riyadh’s Mohammed Abdo Arena.

The one-sided victory came after Nakatani, Kanagawa’s three-weight world champion, beat Sebastien Hernandez Reyes on points after 12 action-packed rounds in the chief support.

Now, after both Japanese icons took care of their respective business in The Kingdom, Inoue (32-0, 27 KOs) insists he is willing to take on Nakatani (32-0, 24 KOs) next, with a May 3 outing said to be planned.

Inoue said: “We have talked about it, we both won tonight, why don’t we fight each other?

“I am very keen on fighting Nakatani, actually I’m asking him to do it. We had a chat about it and it became a big story but it was just a tiny chat.”

It had been suggested that a potential fly in the ointment would be a possible move to featherweight for Inoue, who would then have the chance to win a world title in a fifth weight class.

Given Nakatani’s victory over Hernandez was his debut at 122 pounds, it is unlikely he would be keen to face Inoue up at feather in his very next fight. However, Inoue moved to quell those concerns.

He said: “There is also the possibility that I will move up to feather but it won’t be happening in May, but just a future possibility.”

In the immediate aftermath of his victory over Picasso, the 32-year-old Monster revealed he was not pleased with his performance. Following his unanimous decision win against Murodjon Akhmadaliev in September, these 12 rounds against Picasso meant he went the distance in back-to-back fights for the first time in his 13-year professional career.

Although one judge scored him a 120-108 shutout victory, and the others had him winning 119-109 and 117-111, Inoue was still not happy with the win.

“I wasn’t very happy about it and I understand it was what you expected from me so I wanted to knock him out," Inoue told reporters at his post-fight press conference.

"Picasso was very good at defending so I couldn’t get the stoppage. This is what boxing is about. Sometimes timing is perfect, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes I can knock them out, sometimes I can't. In the future it could happen again so this will be my big challenge for the future.

“There were huge discrepancies in the kind of boxing I’d like to deliver and with my feelings and emotions. It’s something I need to rethink about moving forward for the future.”