Ye Joon Kim curbed his bold personality to instead put on his game face after taking to the scale.

The longshot challenger modestly flexed his chiseled physique after making weight for his first career title challenge. It comes against one of the best in the world in Naoya Inoue, The Ring’s No. 2 pound-for-pound entrant who was also all business at Thursday’s pre-fight weigh-in.

Both boxers weighed 121 ¾ pounds for their scheduled twelve-round main event Friday at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan. Inoue (28-0, 25 KOs) will risk The Ring and undisputed junior featherweight championship against South Korea’s Kim (21-2-2, 13 KOs), who accepted the fight on just eleven days’ notice.

ESPN+ will air the championship affair as part of a doubleheader beginning at 4:15 a.m. ET.

Inoue will attempt his third defense as the fully undisputed champ and fourth overall at junior featherweight. He won the WBC/WBO titles in a July 2023 shellacking of unbeaten Stephen Fulton at this very arena. Five months later, Inoue halted Marlon Tapales in the tenth round to fully unify the division.

The pair of wins saw Yokohama’s Inoue earn Ring Magazine’s 2023 Fight of the Year honors. He also became a two-division undisputed champion just 54 weeks after he fully unified the bantamweight division.

Kim was elevated to main event status after Australia’s Sam Goodman (19-0, 8 KOs) bowed out of the fight for the second time in three weeks.

Inoue was originally due to defend against Goodman, his IBF and WBO mandatory, on Dec. 24. The event was postponed by one month when Goodman suffered a cut during his final day of sparring. The rescheduled date was in jeopardy when the unbeaten Aussie re-opened the wound during training camp.

Kim was already in preparation for a fight with the Philippines’ Kenny Demecillo but was always on standby for a situation just as the one that led to his getting the call.

Opening the ESPN+ doubleheader, Tokyo’s Jin Sasaki (18-1-1, 17KOs) and Kanagawa’s Shoki Sakai (29-14-3, 15 KOs) meet in a twelve-round, regional welterweight title fight.

Sasaki, The Ring’s No. 9 welterweight contender, came in right at the 147-pound limit. Sakai was well inside the mark at 146 ¼ pounds.