Frank Warren Downplays Nick Ball Boxing Naoya Inoue

Frank Warren doesn’t think Nick Ball will face Naoya Inoue next, but does think a matchup against super featherweight champion Anthony Cacace could happen.

Ball is set to make the first defense of his WBA featherweight championship against Ronny Rios on October 5. Heading into the bout, Warren is eager for Ball to fight at home and knows it is a challenging fight for him.

“It’s a tremendous occasion,” Warren told BoxingScene. “I know he’s thrilled with the fact it’s a homecoming. He’s defending his title in his home city, so there’s nothing better than that in front of all his fans. You know, he’s been on a great journey. He’s showed what he’s all about. For me, he’s one of the most exciting, if not the most exciting fighter in the world. Now my job is to make sure that every fight that he has is a fight that’s going to move him further up the pecking order of well-known boxers in the world, to become somebody who is known everywhere.

“He’s more than capable of that because I can’t think of anybody over the years who fights like him, the work rate in a fight is just phenomenal. He’s just all action and really should be defending two belts. He got robbed over in Riyadh the first time around, bad decision by one of the judges, and the second time, obviously he came through with flying colors.”

Nick Ball is 20-0-1 and coming off a split decision win over Raymond Ford. If Ball wins, he has been linked to Inoue, but Warren isn’t sure that fight will happen, as he mentions Cacae as a potential opponent.

“I’ll be honest with you, there’s lots of options,” said Warren. “But I’m not going into it because I’m focusing on what we’re doing now with him and let’s see him come through this. He’s well and truly on the world stage, everybody knows who Nick Ball is and that’s the most important thing…

“That could happen,” said Warren. “I mean he [Cacace] ‘s got a tough fight with Josh Warrington. I fancy him against Josh, but we’ll see obviously. All these guys, there’s so many permutations now, good fights that we can make just within Queensberry. “And yeah, of course it’s one that’s on the table.”

Ball holds notable wins over Isaac Dogboe, Ludumo Lamati, and Isaac Lowe.