LUCAS “BIG DADDY” BROWNE believes he would have ripped the WBC heavyweight crown away from Deontay Wilder if he had been the American’s opponent this weekend.
Wilder made the first defence of his crown against the unheralded Eric Molina on Saturday night and, despite scoring multiple knockdowns before stopping the Texan in the ninth, it was far from a vintage performance.
Molina wobbled the champion with a left hook in the third and attacked his body well in the sixth and seventh before his resolve eventually gave out.
While Browne is the mandatory contender with the WBA and remains on course to face Ruslan Chagaev, Wilder is a fighter on his radar and after Saturday’s showing, he’s confident he can knock the Alabama-native out.
“Eric Molina put up a better showing than most expected and I take my hat off to him for that, but let’s be honest, he was handpicked to make Wilder look good,” Browne said.
“If I’d have hit Wilder with a hook like that one in the third, he wouldn’t have stayed on his feet. I think he’d probably still be asleep now.
“There’s been a lot of hype around Deontay. People have said he’s the saviour of heavyweight boxing, but that performance just made me sad.
“I really can’t see what everyone sees in him. Every time I watch him, I spot flaws that I could exploit. He was lucky he was in with Molina because if he was facing me, he’d have been knocked cold.”
Matt Clark, Browne’s co-manager, added: “While we don’t want to take Lucas’s focus off Chagaev, we’d take a fight with Wilder in a heartbeat.
“Wilder has built up this big reputation without being put in tough fights. Last night was another example of him looking ordinary against an opponent he was supposed to blast out.
“That left hook that wobbled him didn’t even look that hard to me. There is no doubt in my mind that if Lucas had have been facing Wilder instead of Eric Molina, he’d be heavyweight champion.”
