Lucas Browne appears to be finding it incredibly hard to move past accusations he threw Wednesday night’s fight against Paul Gallen.
The 42-year-old heavyweight was floored inside two minutes in a surprisingly quick conclusion to the bout, leading some people to wonder if he’d taken a dive.
The blow which began the end of proceedings was a shot behind Browne’s left ear — the type of shot that doesn’t look to be that damaging but, like Roy Jones found against Danny Green, can be impossible to fight through.
Every day since Browne has mounted a new defence to protect his reputation, first angrily blasting his critics in a 4.30am Facebook post, then revealing he couldn’t hear out of his left ear.
On Saturday morning he provided more evidence — this time rather graphic — after reviewing footage of the bout which he says showed him being hit with illegal forearms and shots to the back of the head by the former NRL star.
“A friend of mine sent me a video this morning (Saturday), a compilation of all the hits … in the ear and behind the head, which obviously explains the extensive amount of pain I was in last night from the flight (home to Perth),” Browne said.
“Also there’s a picture that will show everything that’s coming out of my ear on to my pillow.
“People saying that I threw the fight, I’m just doing it for money … we’ll, I’m sorry. I got hit behind the head five to six times which threw my equilibrium out. Hence I was cross-eyed for most of it and couldn’t fight back.
“I wasn’t knocked out, so to speak, with one punch and out cold. I basically had no equilibrium and couldn’t stand up straight. That was the reason I lost the fight.
“Again, credit to Paul. Well done Gal for getting away with forearming someone and hitting them in the back of the head
Gallen has also denied the fight was fixed, saying his quick victory was down to Browne’s poor preparation.
“There’s no way he took a dive. I flat-out bashed him, to be honest with you,” Gallen said on radio.
“I have no doubt he took me lightly. I said that throughout the whole build-up. He thought he was going to walk through me.
“That was his attitude. He wouldn’t have taken the fight if he thought it was going to be a competition like it was.
“He tried to pull his finger out, but as I said during the press conference, it was too late unless you had done the work earlier on. You can’t cram it all into the last two weeks and he tried to do that and it didn’t work for him.
“He didn’t take a dive. There’s no way he took a dive.
“It disappoints me after all of the hard work I’ve done over the past 11 weeks that people are actually saying that.”
It came after Browne issued an angry message to his critics the morning after the fight.
“It’s so f***ing sad to see so many bulls*** comments, attacks, haters and people saying I took a dive,” he wrote. “I had a fight, I fought s***, couldn’t recover, have been out the ring for too long and got beat, end of story.
“I got in there, had a go, failed, and that’s it … full credit to Gallen. Thankyou to the fans, supporters and sponsors, and I do apologise.
“I believe I got hit back of the head, behind the ear and it f***ed up my equilibrium and I basically couldn’t recover.”