WBA featherweight champion Nick Ball wants to do a better job of beating TJ Doheny than Naoya Inoue did when he defends against the 38-year-old this Saturday night, March 15th, at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England.
Ball reacted to Doheny saying that he’ll show him who a quitter is by stating that he’ll have to kill him, because he’ll never quit. He’d “rather die than quit.”
Quitter Controversy
Doheny (26-5, 20 KOs) was stopped in the seventh round by Inoue last September. The stoppage was due to a back injury that forced the Irish lad out of the fight, but that hasn’t kept many fans from labeling him a quitter. They expected Doheny to fight through the ailment and go on his shield like a warrior. Hopefully, TJ’s back problem doesn’t flare up again, forcing him to give up the ship once again.
Ball (21-0-1, 12 KOs) has taken some flak from fans for choosing to defend his WBA belt against Doheny rather than contenders Bruce Carrington and Brandon Figueroa. Fighting Doheny is a business move, obviously, because it’s a fight that interests the UK public. Also, there’s a lot less risk for Ball and that helps.
“I’m going to want to do a better job than him, and I feel like I can do that” said Nick Ball to Queensberry about wanting to do a better job of defeating TJ Doheny than Naoya Inoue did last September. “That’s what he’s saying,” said Ball when told that Doheny said that he’s going to show who the quitter is. He’s going to need to be fit to do that.
“He’s going to have to kill me to do that. I’d rather die than quit. Good luck with that one. It seems to be, yeah. He seems to be a bit angry,” said Ball when asked if he has the mental edge over TJ Doheny. “I don’t know if that was what he was like in his previous fights or if he has to get up like that to get up for a fight.
“Yeah, he seems a bit angry. You don’t want to be facing me angry. There’s going to come a time where he’s going to try and knock me out. When you try to do that, you have to be careful that you don’t get knocked out yourself,” said Ball.
