You can write off TJ Doheny all you like, he will only spit defiance in reply. 

And it’s not just bluster, the veteran Australia-based Irishman has a long history of proving detractors wrong, and he bids to do it again on Saturday night when he challenges for the WBA featherweight title in champion Nick Ball’s hometown of Liverpool, inside the Echo Arena.

Doheny is fuelled by negativity and fired up by those who say he cannot do something.

“Exactly,” the 38-year-old grins happily on the eve of his challenge. “Like, there’s no better feeling than proving somebody wrong, is there? Especially when it’s a personal attack, so it’s like, that’s your motivation. I’m going to fucking show these c****, you know what I mean? “That’s the motivation, every time. That’s going to get you off the couch. You want to fucking show these c****, prove these c**** wrong every time.

"I’ve done it every time, win or lose, I’ve fucking put in way better fights than some thought I would, Even when I lost to [Naoya] Inoue, everybody was like, ‘Oh, two rounds, he’s done.’ You see the respect that Inoue showed me the whole way up until round six, when he started to turn the heat up? He knew he couldn’t make any mistakes, and that’s why he’s a fucking pound-for-pound great, because he was very cautious, and there was a game of inches in there and, unfortunately, he was just that little bit too sharp. And it’s no shame losing to a fighter like that, even in the fashion I did.”

That fashion saw muscles in Doheny’s back lock and clamp and the pain was too great for him to be able to continue. 

It was a spasm that took days to free up and did not completely heal for weeks, but it happened on the biggest night of his life, an unlikely hand to be dealt that Doheny could just not play with.

“It was like it pushed a muscle, there’s like a little muscle that goes down along the side of your spine above your hip, so I kind of gave my back a bit [facing Inoue] because I was using the shoulder roll, and I gave my back, so he – I can’t say it was an illegal blow because I turned – and he was throwing a body shot. It snuck around the back right on the bell and I remember just kind of just wincing back to the corner at the end of the sixth round. It was good when I sat down but when I got up and the coach said to me… ‘So the first six rounds was to box, neutralize everything he was doing, and then we were going to have a go and bite down from round seven on…’ And we were ready to throw down. 

“That’s why I’m just living with the what-ifs after that fight now, that we never got to have that go. That was the hardest thing to deal with coming out of that fight. I can’t say it was sciatica [the back pain], it was more like a muscle spasm. I don’t know how to describe it, but I had to walk with my rib cage pushed down to my hip to feel no pain, and, if I tried to straighten up, it was excruciating pain. I couldn’t even put my socks on for about three days after the fight. I was just seized up, and it slowly, slowly released, slowly released. Within about three weeks it was back to being free, because I remember going to the park when I got back to Australia to kick a ball with my son and I couldn’t kick a ball because it kept twinging.”

Doheny laments now the “freak injury” but he has not spent a lot of time dwelling on it this week. He has not discussed his fight with Inoue at length, nor does he have any desire to talk about a possible future fight between Ball and Inoue – for obvious reasons.  

But when it came to picking up the pieces after his defeat in Japan last year to one of the world’s finest fighters, he knew right away that – despite the advancing years – he would fight on.

“I was putting in a good shift against a guy who everybody thought was going to blast me out,” he adds. “You see the respect that pound-for-pound number three fighter that was giving me? I took some rounds off him. I probably had one bad round out of the six before the injury came, so for me to analyse that, and the skills I was showing inside just showed me that I’m still performing at the top, so the end is nowhere near close.”

Of course, Ball will be aiming to show him that the end is nigh. The two shared a heated back-and-forth at today’s weigh-in, getting in one another’s grills.

Ball is in-form, no question, but Doheny believes he cracks harder than anyone the champion has previously faced.

“You see,” the challenger explains. “It’s all well and good when you get in there and you’re in against a guy… Nick Ball probably knows. When he’s in there against guys he probably starts to feel the power and knows he can deal with it, and that gives him confidence where he can start walking them down. It’s going to be a big realisation early on in this fight that you can’t just walk through the door with me. We’re not going looking for the knockout because I’m probably the silkiest box he’s been in against, and I’ve got the skills to deal with a shorter pressure fighter but if he wants to get reckless, it could be a bad move with him because I might walk him onto something.”

Doheny promises that he will showcase his skills and that he won’t be looking for one shot to do the damage, even if he has the power to finish a fight early. He knows that Ball is going to come out smoking, firing out of a crouch and he will try to impress his loyal Liverpool fans.

“That's his game, isn't it, he's got nothing else,” Doheny reasons. “He’s got high output and he’s got a serious engine, right? That’s his attributes, let’s be straight. All we’ve got to do is neutralize that with boxing skills, boxing IQ and boxing ability, and I’ve got all three, so for him to try and get to me he might have to make some reckless moves, and that could play into my hands. That’s when we start landing the big shots.”

And that will see Doheny pen another unlikely chapter in his colorful story, one that has taken him around the world and achieve momentous highs and endure some rough lows. The pressure is off, too, with expectation on Ball’s shoulders and Doheny having little to lose in his underdog role.

“Man, it’s been crazy,” he reflects. “And I’m just happy to be writing another page in the book, because I have to go to my BoxRec to remember how many cities I’ve fought in and it's a great experience. It’s great to be looking back on it like that. I didn’t just fight in my hometown all the time, blah, blah, blah. I’ve got the number of high-level performances I’ve put in on the road, I’ve been an underdog so many more times and put in a lot better shifts than what everybody expects, and I just think Saturday night’s going to be another one of those nights.”