Boxing Challenge: Ball steamrolls Doheny

    Two DAZN main events comprise the boxing challenge this weekend as Queensbury led the afternoon card from Liverpool with Matchroom finishing in the evening from Orlando.

In Liverpool, Nick Ball retained his WBA featherweight title when the corner of challenger T.J. Doheny stopped the fight at the end of round ten.

Doheny entered the fight after being stopped by undisputed junior featherweight champion Naoya Inoue in seven rounds and was allowed to challenge for the 126-pound title despite the defeat.

Give Doheny credit, he tried hard and battled through an almost closed right eye but he was never able to slow the unrelenting attack of Ball, and the most exciting part of this fight was Ball kicking Doheny at the end of round one in the corner.

Ball was deducted a point in the eighth round (I think) and I had Ball way ahead otherwise (98-91) at the time of the stoppage.

Ball was mentioned during the fight as a possible future opponent for Naoya Inoue, although that would be more likely in 2026.

Doheny suffered his second straight stoppage loss and at 38 has reached the time that he'll have to decide whether he wants to be a gatekeeper or step away from the game.

In Orlando, Austin Williams won a unanimous decision over Patrice Volny in an entertaining middleweight title eliminator.

Two of the judges scored Williams a wide winner at 118-110 and 116-112 but I had Williams winning the final round to earn the W on my card at 115-113, which is the same as the other judge.

Williams threw just enough punches to gain the small advantage in a very close fight that I wouldn't have complained had the fight been scored a draw or even 115-113 Volny.

Boxing Challenge

TRS: 27 Pts (2)

Ramon Malpica: 26 Pts (3)

Vince Samano: 18 Pts (3)

Boxing Challenge: Inoue forces surrender in seven

      The Monster claimed another meal in Tokyo Tuesday as undisputed world junior featherweight champion Naoya Inoue defended his four championships successfully as former IBF champion TJ Doheny was forced to surrender in round seven.

Doheny fought well as anyone could have hoped as he feinted against Inoue effectively, and landed his straight left, and I even thought he won the third round but Inoue started to whack away at the body of the Australian in the fifth and sixth and near the end of round six, Doheny was visibly shaken by a body punch.

Doheny was driven to the ropes with another body punch in the seventh that turned him around and he immediately indicated he was fine with the stoppage due to either an injury to his back or foot, perhaps even both.

This was about what was expected in the optional title defense and promoter Bob Arum stated the plans for Inoue to have one more fight before the end of 2024.

Inoue does have two mandatories coming up, so it's likely to be either the WBA's top contender in former WBA and IBF champion Murodjon Akhmadaliev or the IBF's leading challenger in Australia's Sam Goodman.

The co-feature was an excellent fight as Yoshiki Takei scraped by former WBC flyweight Daigo Higa with a razor-close unanimous decision to retain his WBO bantamweight title.

Takei controlled the early rounds with Higa dominating late, including an eleventh-round flash knockdown of the champion but with the fight on the line Takei won the final round and with it the fight.

Scores for the champion of 115-112 and 114-113 times two with my score of 114-113 for Higa.

The fight was so close and well-fought, a rematch would make sense.

In an untelevised fight at junior lightweight, Andy Hiroka stopped veteran Ismael Barroso in the ninth round of a WBA eliminator.

Boxing Challenge

Ramon Malpica: 123 Pts (6)

TRS: 112 Pts (4)
Vince Samano: 65 Pts (5)

Boxing Challenge: Conlan, McGregor win in Belfast

    Belfast, Northern Ireland was the site for two lower-weight battles that showed two fighters that are ready to test themselves at a higher level of competition after wins over their best foes to date.

In the main event, former Irish Olympian Michael Conlan won a unanimous decision over former IBF junior featherweight champion T.J. Doheny.

It was a workmanlike performance from Conlan, who scored the only knockdown with a fourth-round body shot, but not a spectacular one in winning a WBA minor title.

Conlan was able to bust up Doheny around the eyes with swelling and while Doheny was aggressively trying to land punches, he simply didn't land enough to worry Conlan, who won on scores of 119-108 and two cards of 116-111, which gave more credit to Doheny than I did in scoring it 118-109 for Conlan.

For Conlan, it does give him a minor WBA title, but the WBA champion Leo Santa Cruz hasn't fought in the division in two and a half years and counting and fights for PBC to make that fight unlikely.

WBC champion Gary Russell fights once a year against his mandatory, which Conlan won't be due his worthless WBA title, the other newly crowned WBA minor beltholder Leigh Wood would make sense as would today's winner of the vacant IBF title fight between Kid Galahad and James Dickens but all three of those fighters are promoted by Matchroom

Conlan's best option may be fellow Top Rank promotee, Emanuel Navarette, for his WBO title, but I don't like Conlan's chances in that fight either.

I think Conlan could win a title depending on the champion that he challenges but it also wouldn't surprise me to see him as a Rocky Juarez type- good enough to be a top ten fighter but not good enough to be elite.

In the co-feature, two former amateur stars risked their undefeated records in the bantamweight division as England's Lee McGregor faced France's Vincent LeGrand.

McGregor was slightly favored as the naturally bigger man with LeGrand moving up from flyweight for the fight but it was LeGrand scoring the first knockdown with a second-round combination that seemed to surprise McGregor.

After three rounds, Legrand had built a four-point lead on my card (30-26) and seemed to be controlling the fighter against the larger man.

Then in the final minute of the fourth round, McGregor landed a left hook to LeGrand's body.

LeGrand dropped to a knee, took the ten count after spitting his mouthpiece out and the fight was over.

Body shots are tough to take and you never really know how much a fighter has been deflated from one but it sure didn't appear that LeGrand gave a lot of thought to even trying to continue.

For McGregor, it's a solid win over an undefeated fighter with a strong amateur background but losing the first three rounds and maybe even the fourth up until the conclusion against a smaller fighter does cause a little concern when McGregor starts to fight contenders of his own size.

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica and I each scored three points to move the total to 103-93.

Boxing Challenge: Estrada gains revenge over Rungvisai

On a Friday night at the formerly Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, California, Matchroom Boxing on DAZN put on an interesting card that drew a mildly disappointing crowd of under six thousand fans.

The main event saw a rematch of one of 2018's best fights of the year as Juan Francisco Estrada reversed the narrative of the first fight by building a lead and holding off the rally of Srisaket Sor Rungvisai to win a unanimous decision to take Rungvisai's WBC junior bantamweight title.
In the first fight, Rungvisai banked several rounds and managed to survive the late surge of Estrada to retain his championship via majority decision, but in the rematch, it was Estrada with the fast start and held a healthy 7-1 lead at the end of the eighth round.
Estrada commanded the fight with his jab and a seemingly confused Rungvisai seemed to be resigned to his eventual title loss being beaten to the punch at almost every turn.
Suddenly, the fight turned to start the ninth as Rungvisai shifted to the lefthanded stance, began to rally back to drill Estrada with his straight left and even appeared to sting Estrada a bit in the 11th.
On my card, Estrada had the fight in the bag, but if one or two rounds were closer, who knows about the cards and Estrada had to feel the same way.
Estrada ran with that and won the final round to win on my card 116-112, but more importantly, on the official cards where had Rungvisai won the final round, he would have saved his title with a majority draw.
My score seemed to be in the middle as many of Twitter watchers and the DAZN commentators had Estrada up by as many as ten points (10-2 in rounds) with yet others such as Steve Kim of ESPN giving the fight to Estrada by two official cards of 115-113.
Estrada seemed amenable to a third fight if he couldn't sign a unification fight against one of the other three champions.
The WBO title is currently vacant and IBF champion Jerwin Ancajas is with Top Rank, making that bout difficult, but WBA beltholder Kal Yafai is also with Matchroom/DAZN and that should be easy enough to make.
I'd be fine with a rubber match as this fight wasn't quite as good as their first, but it was strong enough in the entertainment factor and Rungvisai's late-round swing as a southpaw gives one a reason to think that Rungvisai could win the third bout.

The fight of the night was the co-main as Daniel Roman kept his WBA 122 pound belt and added the IBF title of T.J. Doheny via a majority decision in a great action fight.
Roman dropped Doheny in the second round with a hook, but Doheny wasn't seriously hurt and was close on the cards when Doheny badly hurt Roman with a left that had Roman backing up in the seventh and was looking to survive by the end of the round.
That was the pinnacle for Doheny however as Roman began to rip the Irishman fighting out of Australia to the body and bust his face up to boot as he re-established control.
Roman's bodywork continued to badly hurt Doheny, who began to drop his hands to better protect the body and that cost him as a Roman left dropped him to a knee in the eleventh for the final nail on the scorecards.
Doheny gamely rose and gritted his way to the final bell, but clearly was the loser on the scorecards, if not with the fans after an exciting give and take battle.
I had Roman a 116-110 winner (8-4 with two Roman knockdowns) which matched the two cards for Roman.
Roman looks ahead for another unification soon against WBC champion Rey Vargas, who fights for Golden Boy Promotions, but their deal with DAZN makes fights with Matchroom fighters relatively easy to make.
Should Vargas win his mandated bout against WBC top contender and former champion Julio Ceja, a Roman-Vargas fight for three of the four titles seems to be in the works.

The opener was another fight filled with exchanges as former WBA junior welterweight and WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas stopped another former two-division champion (WBC in both junior lightweight and lightweight) Humberto Soto in the sixth round of a junior middleweight matchup.
Soto started strong and battled evenly for the first five rounds against the naturally larger Vargas. but you could feel that Soto didn't think that he could sustain that pace for ten rounds and was trying for an early win.
Soto looked worn out entering the sixth and Vargas took advantage, pounding him until Soto fell from a right hand.
Soto rose but was overwhelmed by an intense series of shots that forced referee Thomas Taylor to step in and maybe even a bit too late.
Vargas is looking for a third title against WBO (and DAZN) junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia, who has looked very vulnerable in his last two outings.
Vargas had better get Munguia, should he want a title in the division as the other belts (WBA/IBF Jarrett Hurd and WBC Tony Harrison) reside with the PBC for the time being.
As for Soto, who knocked out Brandon Rios in his last fight, he needs to be matched carefully and not against any big punchers.
This loss was the first actual stoppage of Soto's career (He had lost some fights through other measures that didn't reach the distance, but wasn't knocked out) and despite his efforts and courage, Soto doesn't have ten or twelve rounds in him against world-class competition anymore.

In the boxing challenge, I earned three points to Ramon Malpica's two to increase my challenge lead to 97-87.
I added one point apiece for the three winners in the challenge, while Ramon scored one point with the wins by Roman and Vargas, but picked Rungvisai for the point difference.