By Tim Royner: Showing off his superior talent, 2016 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist Tony Yoka (5-0, 5 KOs) defeated an out of shape Dave ‘White Rino’ Allen (13-4-2, 10 KOs) by a 10th round knockout on Saturday night at the Dome de Paris-Palais des Sports in Paris, France. Yoka, 26, appeared to carry Allen until the 10th round. At that time, Yoka suddenly opened up with a flurry of shots to the head of Allen, which led to referee Christopher Fernandez stepping in to halt the contest with Allen still on his feet.
The conditioning for Allen was his major issue in the fight, as he came in much too heavy around the middle for a guy with Yoka’s pedigree. That’s not to say that Yoka looked particularly impressive in the fight because he certainly didn’t. 2016 super heavyweight Olympic silver medalist Joe Joyce likely would have wore Yoka down and stopped him. Allen looked like he didn’t take the fight as seriously as he should have. He has no business coming into a fight weighing in the 260s like he did against Yoka. Allen’s best weight is in the mid-230s. When he’s fighting in that weight region, he has better hand speed and endurance. Against Yoka, Allen was exhausted after the third round and only capable of coming up with a lot of steam on his shots on rare occasions, usually in the first minute of the rounds. You need to wonder what an in shape Allen could have done to Yoka. Allen was catching Yoka with nice uppercuts and looping hooks to the back of the head. Allen definitely got Yoka’s attention with some of his uppercuts and hooks. The problem was, Allen wasn’t throwing nearly enough of them. Further, once Allen gassed out after round 3, his shots often had very little on them.
Allen, 26, protested that stoppage immediately after, waving his arms to let the referee know that he made a mistake of halting the fight rather than letting it go ahead. The referee did Allen a big favor by stopping he contest because he might have been hurt if the fight had been allowed to continue, because the 6’7” Yoka wasn’t going to get tired of hitting the tired, slow and flabby Allen in the head with shots. If not for the referee stopping the fight, there’s a chance that Allen would have been knocked down.
Allen go away with throwing a lot of rabbit punches to the back of Yoka’s head. I looked to me like Allen was throwing punches with the intention of landing to the back of Yoka’s head. The referee gave Allen two warnings for throwing the rabbit punches, but I didn’t change things. He has no chance
Allen looked considerably heavier than he did for his fight against Dillian Whyte two years ago in July 2016. Allen weighed 237 lbs. for that fight. Last Friday, Allen weighed in at 260 lbs., and he did not look like he was in better shape than he was for the fight against Whyte two years ago. From the third round on, Allen looked exhausted and unable to fight hard for any length of time without gassing.
For a fighter with only six years of experience, the 26-year-old Allen has been given great opportunities during his career, opportunities that other fighters would die for. In his short career, Allen has faced Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz and Dillian Whyte. Unfortunately, Allen hasn’t been in the best of shape during many of those fights, and his fighting strategy has looked unsound. Instead of using great game plans that consisted of setting traps, picking spots and varying punching angles, Allen has tended to plod forward like a punching bag, absorbing heavy shots and just looking to land homerun punches. Allen looks like a different fighter when he faces better contenders/prospects than he does when he’s facing domestic level opposition. An in shape Allen, with his high work rate, could be a major threat to a lot of fighters in the heavyweight division. It’s inexplicable to try and understand why Allen would come into an
important fight like his match against Yoka looking so out of condition. It doesn’t appear that Allen trains hard enough for him to be the fighter that he could be. If that’s the case, he should do himself a favor and retire before he winds up punch drunk from taking too many beatings.
Things haven’t been going well with Allen lately with him losing to Lenroy Thomas, Yoka, Ortiz and Whyte. Allen attempted to avenge his loss to Thomas last March, but the fight ended in the 1st round as a technical draw after Allen was cut from a clash of heads.
Allen is going to need to get in better shape in the future if he wants to start having better luck inside the ring, considering he’s starting to take too much punishment in his fights for his career to go much further. Moreover, the boxing public in the UK are going to lose whatever interest they have in Allen’s career if he keeps taking losses like the one he did against Yoka and Thomas. In the first four years of Allen’s career, he got a lot of boxing fans excited about him with his wins over Jason Gavern, Larry Olunbamiwo and Jindrinch Velecky, but things haven’t gone well for him lately. Allen’s conditioning looks to be the major culprit that’s keeping him from finding the kind of success that he might otherwise have. There’s no excuse for Allen to have tired out after just three rounds against Yoka. That was bad. Allen looked like he got off the couch without any training to take the fight against Yoka, and he made him look better than he actually is. The 2016 Olympic gold medalist Yoka is a decent prospect, but he’s more of a flawed Audley Harrison of fighter. The wheels are going to come off Yoka’s machine when he gets matched up against a good heavyweight contender at some point in his career. I suspect that Yoka’s management is already aware of that, which is why he likely won’t be put in against anyone good until he gets ranked highly enough for a world title shot.
Yoka looks like he has stamina issues of his own. He was only fighting hard during spurts, and resting much of the time. The flurry of punches Yoka threw in the 10th round was only because it was the final round and he didn’t need to worry about gassing out. Also, Yoka didn’t have to worry about anything hard coming back from Allen in return because he was so tired and out of shape. Yoka has looked the same way in all of his five fights as a pro. I don’t see any real improvement from Yoka since he turned pro in 2017. Yoka was a good amateur fighter in three round fights, but he doesn’t possess the stamina or the talent to fight hard in a 10 to 12 round fight. Yoka’s victory over Joe Joyce in the finals of the 2016 Olympic competition was highly controversial. In the pro ranks, Joyce’s superior conditioning and pressure would be a real problem for Yoka to try and deal with. I don’t think Yoka would be able to handle more than six or seven rounds of Joyce’s heavy pressure style of fighting before he folded.