TJ Doheny beats Ryosuke Iwasa by decision, wins IBF title

Today at the famed Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Ireland’s TJ Doheny scored something of an upset — and something of a controversial one — over Japan’s Ryosuke Iwasa, winning the IBF super bantamweight title by unanimous decision.

Scores for the fight were 115-113, 116-112, and 117-112, all for Doheny, who remains unbeaten at 20-0 (14 KO). BLH had it 116-112 for Iwasa, who drops to 25-3 (16 KO).

Doheny was the busier fighter throughout, and despite being the shorter man with the shorter arms, actually outjabbed Iwasa throughout the fight. In a sense, it’s not that hard to see how the judges came to the conclusion that they did, but Iwasa was more accurate and did the more visible damage, too, cutting Doheny under the right eye in the first round and under the left eye late in the fight. Doheny also gassed late in the bout, but fought valiantly through the final bell, too.

It was a very game effort from Doheny, who was in his first world title fight, and in the end he came out the victor, which seemed to take him by surprise when his name was read after the scores were announced in Japanese.

CompuBox had Doheny landed 159 of 604 (26%) total punches, and 97 of 362 (27%) power shots, compared to 143 of 485 (29%) total punches for Iwasa, including 105 of 281 (37%) power punches.