TJ Doheny (26-6, 20 KOs) put in a heroic performance in losing by a tenth round knockout to the younger WBA featherweight champion Nick Ball (22-0-1, 14 KOs) on Saturday night at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England. Doheny, 38, fought as hard as he could, getting the better of Ball at times, giving him a lot of problems in the first six rounds of the contest. Ater the end of the tenth, the referee Michael Alexander stopped the fight. The time of the stoppage was at 3:00 of round ten.
In the second half of the contest, Ball took over with the nonstop pressure he was putting on the Irish fighter TJ Doheny and that wore him down. By the eighth, Doheny’s right eye was almost completely swollen shut, and he’d lost a lot of the power on his shots.
The referee penalized Ball a point in the ninth for throwing Doheny to the canvas in a pro wrestling move. This was the second time in the fight that Ball had thrown TJ to the ground. So, the point deduction made sense. The ref gave Nick a huge break by not taking a point off in the first round when he kicked Doheny in the back of his legs after he’d been in a headlock. The kick put Doheny on the canvas.
Undercard results
Super flyweight Jack Turner (11-0, 10 KOs) destroyed Ryan Farrag (23-6, 6 KOs), flattening him with a barrage of power punches in the second round. The referee Steve Gray waved it off when Farrag, 37, hit the deck because he was too hurt to get up from the punches he’d been tagged with.
British and Commonwealth bantamweight champion Andrew Cain (14-1, 12 KOs) used constant pressure to defeat Charlie Edwards (20-2, 7 KOs) by a 12 round split decision to capture the vacant WBC Silver 118-lb title. Edwards looked like he didn’t want to engage, as he was moving around the ring all night, trying not to get hit by Cain’s heavy shots. The crowd was not pleased by the movement from Charlie.
They were booing off and on from the sixth round, trying to encourage Edwards to fight. However, Cain was part of the problem as well because he wasn’t attacking Edwards as hard as he needed to force a brawl. He looked like he was afraid of being counted. In the 11th and 12th, Edwards was aggressive and got the better of Cain. Why he waited this long is the big question. He could have easily won if he’d been willing to trade with Cain. The scores were 115-114, 116-112 for Cain and 115-113 for Edwards.
Lightweight contender Jadier Herrera (17-0, 15 KOs) chopped down the tough Mexican Jose Macias Enriquez (21-4-2, 8 KOs), scoring a seventh round TKO. Herrera landed a lot of heavy punches that slowly took the fight out of the aggressive Enriquez. In the seventh round, Herrera trapped Enriquez against the ropes and unloaded a barrage of hard punches that prompted referee John Latham to stop the fight. The time of the stoppage was at 2:31 of the round.
Herrera traded heavy shots with Enriquez in the first three rounds with both fighters taking some big shots. The punches that Herrera was throwing had a lot more power on them, and it was surprising that the Mexican warrior took them. He was clearly hurt in the second and third rounds after being tagged by lefts from Herrera. He made it out of the rounds by grabbing the Cuban to keep him from finishing the job.
Ionut Baluta (17-5-1, 3 KOs) defeated Brad Strand (12-2, 4 KOs) by a ten-round split decision to win the WBO European super bantamweight title. Baluta knocked Strand down in the ninth round with a right hand to the head. The judges’ scores were 97-93 for Strand, 98-91 and 96-94 for Baluta.