Jason Moloney thought he found the perfect sparring partner in Ye Joon Kim.

Their working relationship ultimately didn’t last beyond their initial meeting, though for good reason. South Korea’s Kim (21-2-2, 13 KOs) was set to help Australia’s Moloney (27-3, 19 KOs) prepare for his Feb. 24 showdown with Tenshin Nasukawa (5-0, 2 KOs).

Then came the call for a far more significant, though short-notice, assignment—a shot at The Ring and undisputed junior featherweight champion Naoya Inoue (28-0, 25 KOs).

“I sparred him on one occasion. I never heard of him before then, but I am training to face Tenshin and needed southpaw sparring,” Moloney told The Ring. “I was talking to a few people around who knew of any good southpaws looking for work. His manager, Mike Altamura, told me about him and that he was training in Brisbane, only an hour drive for me.

“I got eight good rounds out of him and thought to myself, ‘He’s going to be good work for me.’ I planned to spar him again the next week, but between our first spar and our scheduled second spar, he got the call up to fight in Inoue.”

Inoue-Kim will take place this Friday on ESPN+ in the U.S. and Lemino Pay-Per-View in Japan from Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan. The championship affair comes exactly one month before Moloney, The Ring’s No. 7 bantamweight, faces Nasukawa, a former kickboxing superstar and current rising 118-pound contender at the very same arena.

Their fighting styles aren’t identical, but Kim closely resembles Nasukawa’s physical dimensions and can box southpaw or orthodox, depending on the occasion.

The first-time title challenger will need to resort to his entire bag of tricks against Inoue, The Ring’s No. 2 pound-for-pound fighter who has won titles in four weight divisions.

Kim replaced Australia’s Sam Goodman (19-0, 8 KOs), The Ring’s No. 3 junior featherweight, who twice suffered a cut over his left eye which twice left him out of a shot at Inoue. He is brimming with confidence and insists that Inoue has never faced anyone like him over the course already Hall of Fame-worthy career.

Moloney, who suffered a seventh-round knockout loss to Inoue in their Oct. 2020 IBF/WBA bantamweight title fight, got a good chuckle out of the claim.

“I sincerely doubt that,” Moloney said of Kim’s assessment. “In fact, the opposite can be said. Has he fought…really, has anyone ever fought someone like Inoue before, respectfully? It’s good you want to go in there believing you can do the job. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.

“If it wasn’t for Goodman suffering a cut, he never would’ve gotten this fight. I wish him all the best in this fight. But you don’t even have to share the ring with Inoue to know how special he is. He’s one of the best of our generation. Having shared the ring with Naoya Inoue, I don’t give anyone a chance at 122 against him. I don’t really give anyone at 126 much of a chance against Inoue.”