Undisputed junior featherweight champion Naoya Inoue will be back in action on Sept. 3 when he defends his four world championships against TJ Doheny at Tokyo’s Ariake Arena. The fight will be Inoue’s second defense as undisputed champion at 122 pounds as well as his first fight since stopping Luis Nery in May.
The Nery fight saw Inoue suffer the first knockdown of his career, but that was a minor speed bump en route to another thudding knockout victory for “The Monster.”
Inoue has become arguably the top pound-for-pound fighter in boxing, ripping through four weight classes, capturing world titles in each, including going undisputed at both bantamweight and super bantamweight. Inoue has 24 stoppage wins in his perfect 27-0 professional career.
“Naoya Inoue is a generational talent, and every time he fights, the boxing world stops to watch the master at work,” Top Rank chairman Bob Arum said in a press release. “TJ Doheny is a veteran who can never be counted out, as he’s defied the odds many times when fighting in Japan.”
Doheny is a former IBF champion at 122 pounds, having won the belt from Ryosuke Iwasa in Tokyo in 2018 and retaining against Ryohei Takahashi before dropping the title to Daniel Roman in 2019.
The loss to Roman was the start of a 2-4 run for Doheny after winning the first 21 fights of his professional career. Since that rough patch, Doheny has rattled off three consecutive victories. All three of those wins have come in Tokyo, making him an attractive choice for Inoue.
That also explains why Inoue and his team pursued a lower-risk fight with Doheny rather than facing Murodjon Akhmadaliev, who the WBA has already ordered Inoue to face.
Doheny is ranked in the top 10 of all four world championship sanctioning bodies, most notably holding the No. 2 spot in the WBO rankings.
Also announced for the card is WBO bantamweight champion Yoshiki Takei defending his title against former flyweight champion Daigo Higa and interim WBA super lightweight champion Ismael Barroso facing Andy Hiraoka.
