In a tactical fight, top pound-for-pound fighter Naoya Inoue retained his super bantamweight “belts” with a 7th round TKO win over TJ Doheny in Japan. The fight ended as Doheny decided to quit after getting hit with a body punch, claiming he messed up his back. The replay showed it was a body punch that Doheny didn’t want to take any more, where he decided to quit.

The fight wasn’t Inoue’s best performance by his standards, but he gradually gave a methodical beating from the beginning of the fight to the end, slowly wearing down the 37-year-old Doheny body shots as the fight went along. Doheny had a couple of moments in the fight where he landed occasional straight left hands from the southpaw stance in rounds 3 and 4. However they were few and far between, and Inoue basically gave a workman performance as he began to bust up and wear down Doheny.

Inoue really turned it up at the end of the 6th round as he cornered Doheny and began to land body shots to keep Doheny on the defensive, and you had a feeling the end was incoming at the point. Inoie began the 7th round by going to Doheny’s body, and one left hook to the body put Doheny on one knee. The referee asked him if he was on, and Doheny opted to quit at that point, “claiming” he hurt his back. Replay showed it was a body shot that hurt Doheny, and TJ just blatantly quit. 

It wasn’t the best performance from Inoue by his standards, but he did get the job done. Against a guy who was there to survive before he quit it certainly was more than good enough.

Photo Credit; CNN, Nippon.com, Eurosport