Hearn says contract sent to Lucas Browne for Whyte fight on Mar.24

By Boxing News - 12/22/2017 - Comments

Image: Hearn says contract sent to Lucas Browne for Whyte fight on Mar.24

By Scott Gilfoid: Eddie Hearn says he’s sent the contract to former WBA heavyweight champion Lucas ‘Big Daddy’ Browne for him to face Dillian Whyte on March 24 at the O2 Arena in London, UK. As soon as Browne, 38, inks the contract and sends it back, the Browne-Whyte fight will be a done deal.

Browne 25-0, 22 KOs) had been waiting on WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker for a fight with him. Brown was Parker’s Plan-B option if he couldn’t get the fight done with IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. Now that it’s looking like those 2 will be facing each other in March or April of 2018, Browne has chosen to take the next best available payday fight against the 29-year-old Whyte.

”It looks like the 24th of March at the O2,” said Hearn to IFL TV in talking about the Whyte vs. Browne fight. ”He [Browne] was waiting for the Joseph Parker fight. Obviously, it looks like Parker is going to fight Joshua. That frees up Lucas Browne. Lucas Browne stood up and said, ‘let’s do Dillian Whyte,’” said Hearn.

Whyte will have a lot of problems with Browne’s punching power. If Browne let’s his hands go to any extent, he could get Whyte out of there. That’s a big IF. Browne did next to nothing for 9 rounds last year in his fight with WBA World heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev. Browne was getting totally dominated by Chagaev simply by him not letting his hands go. When Browne finally did open up with some power shots in the 10th, Chagaev quickly folded and the fight was stopped. It was troubling though the way that Browne wouldn’t throw punches against Chagaev. If Browne does the same thing against Whyte, he’s going to get blanked on the cards. In the Chagaev fight, Browne was behind by the scores 88-82, 88-82 and 88-81. Browne wasn’t being robbed by the judges. Those were fair scores. Brown wasn’t doing anything. It’s a good thing that he finally let his hands go in the 10th and won the fight. You have to assume though that if Browne fought that way against Chagaev, he’ll do the same thing against Whyte, and wind up losing. Whyte has a decent chin. It’s going to take more than one round of punching for Browne to get him out of there.

It’s possible that Hearn is waiting to announce the Joshua vs. Parker fight on Christmas day. There’s no way that Browne would give up on the Parker fight unless it’s a done deal between Joshua and Parker.

Hearn wanted WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder to fight Whyte on February 3 at the O2, but the money he was offering wasn’t enough to get him to agree to the fight. Hearn thought it would be a keen idea for Wilder to earn the fight against Joshua by fighting Whyte in the UK. Not surprisingly, Wilder and his management weren’t too thrilled at the idea of having to earn a unification fight with Joshua. That would put Wilder in a one down position, where he was basically admitting that Joshua was above him. Wilder wasn’t going to go for that idea. As such, he turned down the offer to fight Whyte. Hughie Fury recently said that he would like to fight Whyte, but he wasn’t interested in fighting him on February 3. It’s unclear whether Hughie would have been willing to take the March 24 date. You must assume that he didn’t like that date either, otherwise we’d be seeing him face Whyte on that date instead of Browne.