The Beltline: After a perfect run of three, Naoya Inoue takes his foot off the gas

Such are the standards set by Naoya Inoue, and so great is his form, the prospect of the Japanese superstar fighting Ireland’s TJ Doheny on Tuesday, September 3 has been greeted with, at best, widespread indifference, and, at worst, condemnation. 

It is, according to most, a fight Inoue doesn’t need and a fight nobody needs to see. It is also, they say, a fight Doheny, 37, neither deserves nor has any chance of winning. 

That of course remains to be seen, but what probably doesn’t help Inoue, and to some extent Doheny, are the expectations we now have when it comes to Inoue selecting opponents and then beating them. Recently we have seen him fight Stephen Fulton, Marlon Tapales and Luis Nery, all of whom brought to Japan more than just a target for Inoue to hit. Each of them meant something in the context of Inoue’s legacy and each of them felt like part of a natural progression, with there being an element of danger, or at the very least intrigue, every time Inoue touched gloves and prepared for the first bell.

This, alas, is not the case with Doheny. In fact, one could argue that this is Inoue’s most underwhelming fight, on paper, since he fought and stopped Aran Dipaen, 12-2, in December 2021. Even his domination of Paul Butler a year later had the lure of winning a WBO bantamweight title and thus moving Inoue a step closer to completing the set. The same cannot be said for Doheny on September 3. The three belts on the line – the WBC, IBF and WBO super-bantamweight belts – already belong to Inoue and, moreover, most believe they already know the outcome of the fight. Seemingly, if Fulton, Tapales and Nery, all objectively better boxers than Doheny, could get nowhere near upsetting Inoue, the assumption is that Doheny will not only go the same way as those three but perhaps go quicker and even more quietly. 

To presume this may be doing Doheny a disservice – particularly given he is yet to be stopped in a 30-fight, 12-year professional career. However, he knows just as we do that there is no opponent quite like the 31-year-old Naoya Inoue, nor much a boxer can do to prepare to fight him. He is in that sense a total anomaly; someone who redefines the word power and the sensation of being hit; someone who changes both the style and disposition of an opponent before even landing a glove on them. 

In other words, for all of Doheny’s courage and toughness, it is hard to imagine him faring differently, never mind better, than the likes of Fulton, Tapales and Nery. Those three, prior to fighting Inoue, were considered threats to him, if not quite his equal, and they also had various weapons you could, if willing to suspend disbelief and be kind, imagine giving Inoue the odd problem or two should he fail to be at his devastating best. Indeed, Nery, the puncher among them, even managed to send Inoue to the canvas for the first time in his career when catching him cold in the first round of their fight in May. That, for Inoue, was a shocking moment in a career otherwise faultless. It also highlighted his willingness to take risks and fight opponents lesser champions may swerve in order to travel the path of least resistance. 

Inoue, to his credit, has never shirked a challenge. Against Nery, too, he rose to the occasion, almost using the first-round knockdown as motivation to sharpen up, tighten up, and take his Mexican opponent seriously. In fact within a round or two Inoue was back in control and Nery was wearing the expression seen so often on the faces of previous Inoue opponents. He was then duly stopped in round six.   

Most expect Doheny, 26-4 (20), to go the same way on Tuesday. After all, as tough as he is, the Portlaoise super-bantamweight lacks the punch power of Nery and the size of Nery and therefore it is hard to see what he can do to Inoue to surprise either Inoue or those watching waiting to be proved right. What is more, it was only in March 2023 that Doheny dropped a 10-round decision to Australia’s Sam Goodman in Sydney. That, at the time, seemed to signal the end of Doheny’s spell in and around the upper echelons of the super-bantamweight division, coming as it did off the back of two other points defeats – one against Michael Conlan in 2021, and one against Ionut Baluta in 2020. 

That it didn’t signal the end says as much about Doheny’s perseverance as anything else. Better yet, he has, since losing against Goodman, actually won three fights in a row, including two against unbeaten fighters – Japhethlee Llamido and Bryl Bayogos – in fights he perhaps wasn’t expected to win. He has also become a familiar face in Japan since that loss against Goodman, fighting and winning there on three occasions, and maybe it is for that reason Inoue, 27-0 (24), has granted him this opportunity in Tokyo. He does little for Inoue’s legacy, to be sure, but that still doesn’t mean a fight between Doheny and Inoue won’t be exciting; nor does it take anything away from the value of stopping a fighter like Doheny for the first time in his career. 

That is arguably the only incentive for Inoue in this one, hence the backlash. Yet if you look at his recent form, and appreciate the fact he is about as active as any world champion in the sport, it is easier to forgive a tick-over fight of this nature. Even if, as many expect, it turns out to be a mismatch, there are mismatches and then there are mismatches; and a “Monster” mismatch, given all Inoue brings to the party, is a different kind of mismatch. It is a mismatch one cannot afford to miss.