By Ian S Palmer
Unbeaten former WBA Heavyweight Champion Lucas ‘Big Daddy’ Browne of Australia will be taking on Dave Allen of Doncaster, England at the O2 Arena in London, England this Saturday, April 20th.
The 12-round bout can be seen live in North America on DAZN while fans in the UK can catch it on Sky Sports. Browne last fought in March when he beat Kamil Sokolowski by a six-round decision. Allen’s last bout was in November when he stopped Ariel Esteban Bracamonte on cuts after the seventh round.
Browne’s now 39 years old and he stopped Ruslan Chagaev for the regular WBA Heavyweight Title back in March of 2016 after recovering from a sixth-round knockdown. He steps into the ring with a record of 28-0 and has 24 big Kos to his name. He turned pro back in 2009 and has 137 rounds under his belt since then. Browne’s one of the bigger heavyweights around as he stands 6-feet-5-inches tall and has a 77-inch reach. He may not have the strongest chin in the division though as he’s been down more than once.
Browne was brutally stopped by Dillian Whyte in the sixth round last year in his only pro loss. What Browne does possess though though is a lot of power in his hands. This is evident by his current knockout ratio of a very impressive 83 per cent and he’s stopped 14 of his past 18 opponents since 2012. Browne has decent experience with wins over the likes of Chagaev, Chauncy Welliver, Julius Long, Eric Martel, Andriy Rudenko, Clarence Tillman, Travis Walker, Jason Gavern and James Toney. But he hasn’t really faced the cream of the crop in the division.
Since turning pro, Browne has won several regional and minor belts such as the Universal Boxing Council Intercontinental Heavyweight Title as well as the WBF Asia Pacific, Australian, WBF World, Commonwealth Boxing Council, WBC Eurasia Pacific Boxing Council, and WBA Inter-Continental Titles.
Allen is 27 years old and climbs into the squared circle with a mark of 16-4-2 along with 13 Kos. He made his pro debut in 2012 and has boxed 94 rounds since then. He’s got decent size for a heavyweight at 6-feet-3-inches and a 75-inch reach. This means he gives up two inches in both height and reach to Browne. His four losses have been to Tony Yoka by 10th-round stoppage last June, a 12-round split decision to Lenroy Thomas in 2017, an eighth-round stoppage to Luis Ortiz in 2016 and a 10-round unanimous decision to Dillian Whyte five months earlier.
His two draws were against Plamen Nikolov over four rounds in 2014 and a technical draw with Lenroy Thomas in 2018. As we can see, Allen hasn’t had too much success when facing upper-class boxers such as Whyte and Ortiz and he hasn’t beaten anybody on the world level. However, he does have a puncher’s chance since he’s got pretty heavy hands with a current knockout ratio of 59 per cent and 13 of his 16 wins have come by stoppage. But on the other side of the coin, Allen’s chin isn’t the greatest.
Prediction…
The easiest prediction here is that somebody’s going down. In fact both Browne and Allen could hit the deck in this fight since both men definitely have the power to drop each other and will be looking to land something hard and heavy before their opponent does. If either of them causes damage they should just keep throwing punches and try for a stoppage. This bout will come down to power and chins and could end up being a bit of a slugfest. As for who wins it, you can flip a coin. I’ll give Browne the benefit of doubt here since he’s taken on tougher opponents during his career.
