Naoya Inoue maintained his indisputable extremely bantamweight champion with a seventh round TKO win over TJ Doheny in a battle that had an anticlimactic ending and a bit of intriguing boxing ahead of time.

Inoue (28-0, 25 KO) does get the interruption and was significantly in control of the battle, however the interruption came due to what seemed a lower back or leg injury to Doheny (26-5, 20 KO), whose creative, seasoned savvy-style boxing had actually provided Inoue some good looks if not what you’d call “fits.”

Inoue seemed constructing major momentum with his body operate in the last number of rounds before the interruption at 16 seconds of the seventh round, and the result was looking less and less in doubt, however you dislike to see any fighter get stopped on the sort of little thing that can simply take place therein.

Give the 37-year-old Doheny his credit, as the Irish-Aussie southpaw can be found in with a genuine strategy and had some success versus Inoue, 31, even if he never ever appeared most likely to in fact win the battle over the long run.

We will now wait to see what follows for Inoue, who might possibly battle on New Year’s Eve, which is constantly a huge battle date in Japan and one Inoue has in fact refrained from doing, though he’s had a number of December battles in his profession, consisting of the last 3 years.

In the primary assistance, Yoshiki Takei (10-0, 8 KO) maintained his WBO bantamweight title, coming off the canvas — formally, a minimum of — to endure a terrific obstacle from Daigo Higa (21-3-1, 19 KO) over 12 rounds.

Takei won a wonderful action battle on ratings of 114-113, 114-113, and 115-112, which is a completely reasonable result, however it was a hell of a test for the 28-year-old titleholder, as Higa looked a lot like the guy he was expected to be before a rough five-fight run where he went 2-2-1 in 2018-21.