Death, taxes and Luis Nery at the center of pre-fight drama.

Barely two weeks after nearly coming to blows with Kyonosuke Kameda during their kickoff press conference, Nery struggled to come correct at the scale. The former two-division titlist needed two tries to come in at the contracted limit of 124 pounds for their scheduled ten-round main event this Saturday.

ESPN Knockout (Latin America) and ABEMA-TV (Japan) will air their bout live from Auditorio Municipal in Nery's hometown of Tijuana' Mexico.

Japan's Kameda weighed 124 on the first try and took to social media afterward to comment on his opponent's follies.

"Weigh-in successfully passed," Kameda posted on X. "Nery should lose 900+ [grams] at reweigh-in."

Nery (35-2, 27 KOs), The Ring's No. 4 junior featherweight contender, was nearly at the full featherweight limit on his first attempt. The Tijuana southpaw came back two hours later to fulfill his obligation.

Saturday will mark the first fight for Nery since his challenge of The Ring/undisputed 122-pound king Naoya Inoue (29-0, 26 KOs) last May 6 at the famed Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan. Inoue was forced to overcome the first knockdown of his career to score three of his own in a sixth-round knockout win.

The setback snapped a four-fight win streak for Nery, who entered as Inoue's WBC mandatory challenger. He earned that right with an eleventh-round knockout of Azat Hovhannisyan in their Feb. 2023 thriller, which was lauded as one of the year's best fights.

Kameda (15-3-2, 9 KOs) will hit the road for the first time in his six-year career. He carries a nine-fight unbeaten streak into his first trip abroad.

Three of those wins during that stretch have come since Nery's last fight. Kameda most recently blasted out Mexico's Angelo Beltran in the first round last Dec. 21 in Shizuoka, Japan. The show was promoted by Kameda Promotions, whose founder is Koki Kameda, a former three-division champ and Kyonosuke's older cousin.

While the fight takes place in Mexico, the pair of pre-fight incidents only add to Nery's troubled past with Japanese boxers.

His two fights with Shinsuke Yamanaka both carried controversy of varying degrees. Nery defeated Yamanaka via fourth-round knockout in Aug. 2017 to win The Ring and the WBC bantamweight title in Kyoto, Japan. He subsequently tested positive for a banned substance, but was absolved by the WBC, who attributed the matter to tainted consumed meat.

There was no saving Nery's soul during their March 2018 rematch at Ryogoku Kokugikan Arena in Tokyo. He miserably missed weight, which resulted in his being stripped of the WBC title. The fight proceeded, which saw Nery score a second-round knockout—only to earn an indefinite suspension by the Japanese Boxing Commission (JBC).

The ruling was believed to be a lifetime ban, only to be clarified years later. Nery was cleared by the JBC in time to challenge Inoue at the famed Tokyo Dome.