Inoue stops Doheny in seven to retain undisputed crown: Highlights

Naoya Inoue retained his championship against TJ Doheny.

Naoya Inoue retained his undisputed super bantamweight championship with a seventh round TKO win over TJ Doheny in a fight that had an anticlimactic ending and a little bit of interesting boxing beforehand.

Inoue (28-0, 25 KO) does get the stoppage and was increasingly in control of the fight, but the stoppage came due to what appeared to be a lower back or leg injury to Doheny (26-5, 20 KO), whose clever, veteran savvy-style boxing had given Inoue some decent looks if not what you’d call “fits.”

Inoue appeared to be building serious momentum with his body work in the final couple of rounds before the stoppage at 16 seconds of the seventh round, and the outcome was looking less and less in doubt, but you hate to see any fighter get stopped on the sort of little thing that can just happen in there.

Give the 37-year-old Doheny his credit, as the Irish-Aussie southpaw came in with a legitimate plan and had some success against Inoue, 31, even if he never appeared likely to actually win the fight over the long haul.

We will now wait to see what comes next for Inoue, who could potentially fight on New Year’s Eve, which is always a big fight date in Japan and one Inoue has actually not done, though he’s had several December fights in his career, including the last three years.

In the chief support, Yoshiki Takei (10-0, 8 KO) retained his WBO bantamweight title, coming off the canvas — officially, at least — to survive a great challenge from Daigo Higa (21-3-1, 19 KO) over 12 rounds.

Takei won a fantastic action fight on scores of 114-113, 114-113, and 115-112, which is a totally fair outcome, but it was a hell of a test for the 28-year-old titleholder, as Higa looked a lot like the guy he was supposed to be before a rough five-fight run where he went 2-2-1 in 2018-21.