By Scott Gilfoid: In a big surprise, heavyweight Dave Allen (13-4-2, 10 KOs) will be facing unbeaten Nick Webb 12-0, 10 KOs) in a scheduled 12 round fight this Saturday night on July 28 on the undercard of Dillian Whyte vs. Joseph Parker on Sky Box Office at the O2 Arena in London, England. This looks really bad for card.
Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn had hoped to match the 6’5” Webb against unbeaten 2016 Olympic Silver medalist Joe Joyce (5-0, 5 KOs), but he was unable to take the fight at this time. The Whyte-Parker card has been plagued with problems. Last week, Kell Brook pulled out of his scheduled co-feature fight against Brandon Cook due to injury. Hearn then planned on substituting Sam Eggington as a replacement for Brook in facing Cook. However, on Monday came the news that the 24-year-old Eggington (23-4, 15 KOs) has suffered an injury sparring and has pulled out of his fight against Cook (20-1, 13 KOs). This is obviously why Hearn threw together the Webb vs. Allen fight for the Whyte-Parker card on July 28.
I can’t say that Webb-Allen is worthy of being shown on Sky Box Office pay-per-view, but then again neither is Whyte vs. Parker in my opinion. That’s a great fight for regular Sky Sports, but it sure as heck isn’t good for Sky box Office. With all the hits the card has taken with injuries, you have to wonder if Hearn will take the Whyte vs. Parker fight off Sky Box Office and make it just a regular non-PPV card. I can’t imagine British boxing fans will be excited at seeing Webb and Allen square off in the co-feature bout on the card. That’s a horrible fight for a co-feature. My guess is Hearn will move the heavyweight clash between former world title challengers Dereck Chisora and Carlos Takam to the co-feature. It’s kind of a no-brainer to have that fight as the co-feature. I think the fight is about as good as Whyte-Parker. I would pick Takam to beat both of those guys.
Chisora already arguably beat Whyte two years ago in 2016, but he wasn’t given the victory. Whyte never gave Chisora a rematch for some reason. Hearn’s card for this Saturday is a shipwreck. I don’t know what he can do to fix it. Certainly adding a mismatch like Webb vs. Allen to the card won’t improve it to any great extent. The original co-feature bout between Kell Brook and Brandon Cook was considered a mismatch in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. But sticking the hapless Dave Allen in with the 30-year-old Nick Webb is just a really bad idea. It’s not even a sporting fight. Allen is a journeyman at best, and he’s been looking incredibly bad since last year in losing to Tony Yoka and Lenroy Thomas.
Allen weighed in at a fat-looking 260 pounds for his last fight against 2016 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist Tony Yoka (5-0, 4 KOs) on June 23, and he ended up getting stopped in the 10th round in Paris, France. Allen was at his best four years ago when he was weighing in the mid-230s for his fights. In the last year, Allen has packed on a lot of weight and he looks flabby at this point like he’s carrying around an extra 30 pounds of fat. You must wonder whether Allen lacks the dedication to his career to take the weight off. He’s clearly not as effective now as he was several years ago. Against Yoka, Allen looked tired by round three, and he labored during most of the rounds. Occasionally, Allen would show brief bursts of energy in attacking Yoka, but then he would quickly exhaust himself and go back to absorbing punishment. The sad thing is an in shape Allen would have had a real chance of beating Yoka in that fight, as the Frenchman looked nothing special at all. Yoka was there to be beat if Allen had been in tip top shape.
Perhaps it’s for the best, as Eggington would have been really up against it in taking on a tough operator like Cook on short notice. Eggington is an easy to hit plodder type of fighter, and Cook is good at dishing out punishment. Yeah, Cook obviously isn’t the best fighter in the 154lb weight division, but he’s more than than good enough to give an easy to hit fighter like Eggington a royal thrashing. It’s good that
Eggington pulled out of the Cook fight because he was asking for punishment had he taken it.
It’s unclear if Dave Allen has been training at all. If he’s been hanging around the sofa since his loss to Yoka last June, then his fight against Webb this Saturday won’t last long. I hope for Allen’s sake that Eddie Hearn gave him a good payday to take the Webb fight on short notice like this, because this is a tough fight to take with only five days’ notice. If Allen waddles into the ring weighing 270, he’s not going to have much of any chance of beating Webb. Allen has basically no chance of winning this fight anyway, but if he’s badly out of shape, this fight is going to end quickly. Webb isn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread, but he’s leagues better than Allen in my estimation. Webb vs. Joyce would have been a good fight. I think Joyce would have beaten Webb down and stopped him, but at least it would have been a competitive fight.
Allen vs. Webb is a horrible mismatch. Allen was scheduled to fight on July 27, so he must have been training. But then again, you never know. Allen looked fat in weighing in at 272 pounds for his fight against David Howe last June, and he obviously knew about that match ahead of time. Allen weighed 36 pounds more against Howe than he did in weighing in at 236 lbs. for his previous fight against Lenroy Thomas last March. Like I said, you have to wonder about whether Allen has his head in the game at this point in his career. Hearn should have been giving him some confidence boosters instead of feeding him to Thomas, Luis Ortiz, Dillian Whyte and Yoka. Even matching Allen against one of those guys was a bad idea. Hearn should have built Allen up before matching him against those types of fighters. I don’t know if it would have made a lot of difference though, as Allen looks pretty limited in terms of his physical skills. But it’s still a good idea to have given Allen confidence boosters after he was pounded by Lenroy Thomas in 2017.
It’s too bad Hearn doesn’t have anyone else he could plug in to face Brandon Cook. It would be fun to see Hearn to match one of his new DAZN signees against Cook.