Spike O'Sullivan: TJ Doheny's title shot might be the biggest fight ever for an Irish boxer
Doheny Of Weigh Title Tj Fight Pose Inoue Picture: Japan's Ireland's Their In Bantamweight Via Ahead Title Official And Shot: Nogi/afp Naoya Super After Images The Kazuhiro Getty
Tuesday afternoons aren’t anybody’s idea of primetime. This one should be because Portlaoise’s TJ Doheny is challenging Naoya Inoue for the Japanese fighter’s IBF, WBC, WBA and WBO world super-bantamweight titles in Tokyo. It might actually be the biggest fight any Irish person has had in history. That's a big statement, but it’s what I'm thinking.
People will have their own opinions on the ‘biggest’ before now. Off the top of my head?
You would automatically go back to Steve Collins’ fights against Chris Eubank. Andy Lee beat Matt Korobov for the WBO title in Las Vegas ten years ago when Korobov was undefeated. Carl Frampton would have been involved in some as well. And Katie, obviously. Doheny is fighting a guy who is arguably number one in the pound-for-pound rankings right now.
All bar three of Inoue’s 27 fights have been held in Japan. Boxing Kingdom asked on X this week if he needs to appear more in the US to become a true superstar, but he is absolutely huge in his own country. A crowd of 40,000 watched his last fight, at the Tokyo Dome in May. He is undefeated over a dozen years with 24 knockouts.
Inoue is a four-weight champion and undisputed in two of those divisions. He unified the bantamweight division in late 2022. No-one had ever done that before in the ‘four-belt’ era. He unified at super-bantam in December of last year. That made him the first man to be undisputed at 122 lbs since 1976.
It doesn’t get much bigger than this.
I’ve watched a lot of Inoue’s sparring as well and he seems to be very relaxed. He’s an all-rounder and his power is phenomenal. That knockout record speaks for itself. He’s 14-0 against former or reigning world champions. Twelve of those were knockouts. He seems like a nightmare. ‘Monster’ is the perfect name for him.
He’s just an absolute beast. Whatever about where he fights, no-one who knows boxing disputes how good he is. He does everything very well, but it was interesting to see that the Mexican guy who knocked him down in his last fight, Luis Nery, was a southpaw. Like TJ. So you’d never know, even if TJ is 100/1 with the bookies.
TJ calls himself ‘The Power’ and he has 26 wins and 20 knockouts. He has been put down three times in his career and got back up every time and has never been beaten inside the distance. There’s a chance this might be the first time for that and the question is if he will be able to damage Inoue.
I lived with TJ in Boston for two months when we were both with Murphy’s Boxing. We lived in an apartment and got on very well. I’m rooting for him all the time and I’d love to see him do it. He's already shown phenomenal resilience and determination to get back to this level after losing three of four fights a few years ago.
He looked kind of drawn when he lost to Michael Conlan in Belfast in 2021 so it might be a surprise to some people that he’s back here now and fighting for these world titles. That might be down to something in our Irish DNA but he looks in incredible shape. They both do.
I saw the pre-fight stuff they were doing and TJ looks ripped. How does he approach this? His best option here is to go in early and find a way to get a knockout. He’s 37 now, six years older than Inoue, so age will be on the other guy’s side as well.
In terms of the mental approach, it doesn’t matter if you’re fighting in a gym with two or three coaches, in the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, or at Madison Square Garden. No-one else can get in the ring, no matter how hard they shout. I block all of that out and just focus on my opponent, as if I’m in the gym sparring.
I look to conserve my energy. TJ knows all this. He has gone into the lion’s den plenty of times before. He won his last three fights in Japan, two against guys who had been undefeated up to then, and he won his IBF world super-bantamweight title in Tokyo against the champion Ryosuke Iwasa in 2018.
There’s never been a British fighter who went to Japan and won a title there. Two Irish fighters have. Wayne McCullough did it back in 1995 and TJ did it six years ago. Two small Irishmen, which is fantastic. He beat a Thai fighter in Bangkok with a good record as well when he had been obviously brought in to lose.
TJ has been based in Australia a long time now. It might be because of that and his quiet personality but he is one of the most underrated and underappreciated boxers and sportspeople Ireland has produced in the last decade. Without a shadow of a doubt. He is a phenomenal fighter and he should be celebrated a lot more here.
Determination is the one thing about him that stands out. He’s methodical and driven. He really respects his opponents and he’s a very quiet guy. He was never into social media that much. He might have got into it a bit more since I saw him last, but he is a quiet, no-bullshit type. Not like myself!
He has fought in six countries - Australia, Japan, the US, Northern Ireland, the UAE, Thailand - and he has a good record in causing these upsets. So if anybody can do this you would have to say TJ can. It’s almost like a Collins-Eubank thing again. Collins had been beaten three times and then went and beat Eubank. TJ has been beaten four times.
He probably still wouldn’t get the acclaim it would deserve if he won this fight. Nothing like the sort of hype and everything else that we saw around Collins-Eubank. We’ll never see the likes of that again. It looks like he could be stopped fully for the first time in his career this time. I hope I’m proven fully wrong.