LAS VEGAS — It’s hard to miss “The Monster” Naoya Inoue anywhere you look around Sin City as he prepares to defend his undisputed junior featherweight titles Sunday at T-Mobile Arena.

The MGM Grand features Inoue on the facade of its iconic green exterior. MGM Resorts properties such as New York, New York advertise the fight on its massive marquees. When you walk into the MGM Grand, you’re greeted by the traditional boxing ring and gold lion that signals a big fight is right around the corner. His face is on the felt of the Blackjack tables. When you check into a hotel room across The Strip, you’re met with Inoue on the cover of Las Vegas Magazine. When you turn on the TV in a room, the first thing you see before you can flip through the channels is Inoue’s fight poster on the screen.

In a city filled with high-profile acts and prestigious artists, Top Rank and Las Vegas have rolled out the red carpet for the prolific Japanese pugilist’s first true event in the United States. The four-division champion Inoue (29-0, 26 KOs) has fought stateside three times before, but two of the occasions were during the pandemic in Las Vegas and the other was on a 2017 undercard in Los Angeles. An April 2020 fight against John Riel Casimero also was supposed to take place at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, but that event was canceled due to the pandemic.

As Inoue made $42 million last year and sold out Tokyo Dome in front of 55,000, the boxing public continued pounding the table and pleading for his long-planned stateside return.

But the desire and demand haven’t been dancing in tandem for a generational talent who’s knocked out his last 10 opponents. Consumers haven’t responded strongly to the fight despite the monster marketing blitz around boxing’s customary Cinco De Mayo Weekend, which has been lately dominated by Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez.

Ticket prices for the Inoue-Cardenas fight have been lowered in recent weeks, and seats for the entire upper bowl of the stadium are not being sold. The open-to-the-public weigh-in was held in a ballroom at MGM Grand instead of MGM Grand Garden Arena or Toshiba Plaza, a traditional location for big-time fights across from T-Mobile Arena. Just 200 seats for the weigh-in were made available to the public, but the demand appeared to be way more, as a standing-room only crowd filled in.

Efforts to build anticipation for the event have not been assisted because another Inoue victory appears to be a foregone conclusion against the little-known Cardenas (26-1, 14 KOs), a WBA No. 1-rated contender who was driving for Uber, Lyft and DoorDash to get by less than two years ago.

Sportsbooks are listing Inoue as a minus-10000 betting favorite to beat Cardenas (+1200), his third soft touch in a row following easy knockout wins against TJ Doheny in September and Ye Joon Kim, a late replacement February opponent for Sam Goodman.

After years of headlining weekday shows in Japan during the morning wee hours in the U.S., the ESPN broadcast is set to begin at 7 p.m. PT. It should draw significant viewership because it conveniently follows fellow countryman and baseball star Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ game against the Atlanta Braves.

"The ideal situation is to show the American fans my boxing and win with a knockout,” Inoue said through a Japanese translator during a press conference Friday. “But more than anything, I want people to see something they haven't been able to see yet in the U.S. … I think it's a good platform to show my boxing skills.

“I'm very motivated to fight in front of an American crowd in a big arena like this, but because it's during Cinco De Mayo Weekend it feels like I'm playing an away game. So I don't know what to expect."

Top Rank boss and Inoue co-promoter Bob Arum made it a point to feature Inoue in the U.S., a move the fighter co-signed. Arum and event organizers were expecting a heavier Japanese contingency, but the fan base in Japan has not correlated to the States and across the customers who frequent the casinos. Around 10,000 fans are expected to attend the fight.

More than 30 Japanese media members have been credentialed to cover the event, but many also have stayed home because the clash is not compelling.

“When you have somebody as big as Inoue is in Japan, you want to showcase him all over the world,” Arum told The Ring. “He’s an industry all to himself in Japan, but the reception has been very good. He's such a delightful person. He's everything you want a top fighter to be outside of the ring.”

Promoter Lou DiBella, who's involved in the event by handling Edward Vazquez in the co-feature against WBO featherweight champion Rafael Espinoza, told The Ring that Inoue’s inability to sell out a show in Las Vegas is part of a larger epidemic plaguing the sport.

"Why are we so arrogant to believe a superstar from another country needs us?" said DiBella. "The reception is not there because we've done a sh---y job for a long time. It's very ambitious to think a Japanese junior featherweight is going to sell 20,000 tickets in Las Vegas on Cinco De Mayo Weekend with Canelo fighting in Riyadh and a major card in New York.

"I'm rooting for all of the shows, but we need to revive the sport in America. We're not at the height of our fan interest in America right now. Any American promoter who doesn't say, 'We f---ed this up together' is lying. We made our own bed and we are all responsible. You see where we are worldwide with the major matchups. Riyadh and the United Kingdom have become the center of the sport. That's a fact, and Inoue can sell out the Tokyo Dome every time he fights."

Although Inoue is incredibly active, The Ring’s No. 2 pound-for-pound fighter, 2023 Fighter of the Year and second most popular Japanese athlete only behind Ohtani does not yet have a fervent following in the U.S. akin to Alvarez, Gervonta Davis,or Manny Pacquiao, another lighter-weight unknown star from the Eastern hemisphere who became a massive draw as a generational talent.

Perhaps Inoue, The Ring, WBA, WBC, WBO, and IBF champion at 122 pounds, can still build a cult-like following in the U.S. as Kazakh KO artist Gennadiy Golovin did before him. But who knows when, or if, Inoue will ever return to the States despite his desire to also fight at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The 32-year-old’s calendar is filled for the foreseeable future.

Inoue has a planned fight against Murodjon Akhmadaliev on Sept. 14 in Tokyo, a featherweight debut against WBA titleholder Nick Ball in Saudi Arabia during a Riyadh Season event in December and another return to Tokyo for one of the most anticipated matchups in boxing against fellow countryman Junto Nakatani, The Ring’s No. 8 P4P fighter and WBC bantamweight champion.

During fight week, the no-nonsense Inoue shut down social media fodder-like discussions around a fight against the lightweight champion Davis. Inoue also insisted that he won’t fight past 126 pounds, and a retirement could be coming in three years.

Meanwhile, the relaxed and laid-back Cardenas, a 29-year-old Mexican-American from San Antonio, Texas, is coming off a career-best win against the previously unbeaten Bryan Acosta in February. He’s confident he can pitch a perfect game — he may need to bring a baseball bat to the ring to do that — and beat Inoue to pull off the shocker of the century, just like 42-1 underdog Buster Douglas did to Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1990.

That fight also happened to be the last boxing event that was held in the famed stadium before Inoue was featured there last year against Luis Nery, a sixth-round stoppage that included a shocking knockdown of Inoue, the first of his career.

“I have to be perfect for 36 minutes — that’s the way to beat him,” Cardenas told The Ring. “I don’t know [how I am going to beat him]. But I know that I am going to win. No one is giving me a chance to even survive three rounds. It will be an oh s--t win heard around the world. Everyone will stop and be like, 'Who beat him?'”

After Tyson got knocked out by Douglas, his trainer Aaron Snowell famously said it got so quiet in Tokyo Dome that you could hear a rat piss on cotton.

Cardenas, who sports a rattail, is looking to repeat history and show he has more than just a snowball’s chance in hell to prevail.

“You're going to hear a pin drop in the arena when I beat him,” he said.

The soft-spoken Inoue took a rare page from the pre-fight promotional playbook and said Cardenas is the one who’s getting dropped and disposed of in a dress rehearsal as he moves on to bigger and better things.

“I have no fear of losing. I've prepared for this fight harder than any other fight I've had,” said Inoue. "Cardenas is a beautiful fighter. He's an all-around good fighter, but for me, it's easy. No matter how he comes out, I think I have the advantage … I have nothing more than pure confidence for this fight.”