Lucas ‘Big Daddy’ Browne (16-0, 14 KOs) outpointed American legend James ‘Lights Out’ Toney (74-8-3, 45 KOs) over 12 rounds to capture the World Boxing Foundation heavyweight title at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre this afternoon in Melbourne, Australia.
The first half of the fight saw an interesting contest with the shorter Toney starting positively looking to attack Browne with Browne using his range to set up power shot opportunities. Toney caught Browne with some good right hands in round five while Browne used his jab to great effect to keep Toney at bay for the most part of each round, to rack up points with the judges. Browne’s heavy hands always seemed to look threatening but the Australian respected Toney’s defensive nous and opted against being overly aggressive.
The second half of the fight saw Browne continue to use his size to control the smaller Toney whilst Toney reduced his offensive output which saw Browne take the later rounds to record a 117-111, 119-109 and 120-108 victory on the three judge’s scorecards.
In the main support bout, American Kevin Johnson (29-3-1, 14 KOs) dominated Australian Solomon Haumono (20-2-2, 18 KOs) from start to finish in their contest for the OPBF heavyweight title. Johnson’s counterpunching saw Haumono unable to mount sustained attacks on the 33 year old American, but was able to land the occasional power shot that threatened Johnson on a few occasions during the bout.
Knowing he had the fight well under control, Johnson started to showboat in the later rounds before catching Haumono with a perfectly timed right hand in the tenth round which saw the Australian drop to the canvas with the referee immediately waving off the bout.
The two winners of these two bouts, Browne and Johnson, are now set to do battle with each other in three months time where after Browne’s victory speech, Kevin Johnson joined the ring to commence promoting the showdown.