Pound-for-pound star and reigning unified super-bantamweight champ Naoya Inoue will, as fans know, next face Irish warrior TJ Doheny. Who? This is the reaction some fans have had at the fight announcement. Southpaw Doheny is 37 years old and he has a good record at 26-4(20), with him never having been stopped. Doheny, a former IBF super-bantamweight champion, has won his last three fights by stoppage, with each of them taking place in Japan, where he will face “The Monster” on September 3rd.
Doheny last tasted defeat in March of last year, when he dropped a decision against Sam Goodman, who is Inoue’s IBF mandatory challenger (and will almost certainly be next for Inoue, assuming Doheny does not pull off the, pardon the pun, monster upset in September). Goodman was expected to have been next for Inoue, but the Australian fighter injured his hand in a keep-busy fight that he decided to take ahead of his shot at Inoue.
So, in comes Doheny, and it is fair to say that the critics have had a fair bit to say about this fight. Indeed, Eddie Hearn has gone as far as to say the fight is “a horrific mismatch.”
Speaking with BoxNation, Hearn said Inoue should be facing his WBA mandatory, Murodjon Akhmadaliev next, not Doheny.
“Gutted, devastated, disappointing for boxing. Disappointing for Japan,” Hearn said of the upcoming fight between Inoue and Doheny. “If I hadn’t worked with TJ Doheny five or six years ago I would really go in on this fight. But I don’t want to disrespect TJ because he’s a nice guy. It’s a horrific mismatch. I don’t understand why, for some reason, Team Inoue and Mr. Honda and everyone, I know for a fact they don’t like the Akhmadaliev fight. I don’t understand that you’ve got a pound-for-pound arguably number one, who has the opportunity to fight his mandatory. I wouldn’t expect him to pick Akhmadaliev in a voluntary…..it’s hard to say Inoue is ducking Akhmadaliev, but he actually is.”
Is Hearn being too harsh here, or is he spot on? Doheny will of course not like being referred to as a challenger who will give Inoue nothing more than “a horrific mismatch,” any more than Inoue will like being called a ducker. In time, if Inoue gets past Doheny and then Goodman, and if he then fights and defeats Akhmadaliev, everyone will be happy.
But for now, Inoue is widely expected to have his way with Doheny, even if the tough Irishman has never been KO’d. Will this change on September 3rd?
