Liverpool’s featherweight world champion Nick Ball will defend his WBA title in his home city against TJ Doheny on Saturday, 15 March, at the M&S Bank Arena.
The 27-year-old beat Ronny Rios in October and makes a second defence of his belt he won against Raymond Ford in Saudi Arabia last year.
Doheny, 38, is a former IBF super-bantamweight champion.
The Irishman has won 26 fights and lost five, including a seventh-round stoppage defeat to undisputed super-bantamweight title-holder Naoya Inoue in September.
“Nick Ball, the best featherweight in the world, gets to fight in his home city for the second time as world champion and he is up against a fighter of huge pedigree in TJ Doheny,” said Queensberry’s Frank Warren, who promotes Ball.
‘Wrecking Ball’, who made his debut in a Liverpool nightclub in 2017, has his eyes set on a future fight with Japan’s pound-for-pound star Inoue.
Ball is undefeated in 22 fights, winning 12 inside the distance, and gets the chance to compete in his home city of Liverpool for the second successive time.
It will be Ball’s fourth consecutive title bout after a draw with WBC featherweight champion Rey Vargas in March, before beating Ford three months later and then defending in Liverpool against American Rios.
Bantamweight Andrew Cain will also fight on home soil in an all-British bout against Londoner, and former world champion, Charlie Edwards.
And a third Liverpudlian Brad Strand will be on the undercard as he faces Romania’s Ionut Baluta for the vacant WBO European super-bantamweight title.
