WBA Featherweight Championship of the world.
Sydney, Australia. 7th of August, 2005.

Young gun, Tommy Browne
[22 fights W18 [ 7kos,] L3 D1. ] promised to start the year with a bang, when he faced , the rugged WBC. Champion, In Jin Chi in Korea in January. It was always going to be a hard task for the quiet man from Campbelltown, in Sydney. Browne trained hard for the fight and as usual, gave his all in the ring against the Korean but was physically overpowered over the 12 gruelling rounds, due to the fact that he found it hard to make the 126lbs featherweight limit.

When Browne arrived back to Australia, there was talk of him stepping up in weight to super feather weight and lo and behold, along came the experienced Baby Larona Jnr , in a match up for the vacant IBF Pan Pacific super featherweight title, which was up for grabs and Browne jumped at the chance. Browne boxed well and picked up the title from the tough Larona , winning by unanimous decision. With a successful leap to Super feather,and at 22 years old, Tommy Browne was finally where he wanted to be.

Boxing is a funny old game. Fighters, trainers , managers will do almost anything to get a title shot. Right or wrong , its always been the way.

WBA featherweight champion, Chris John [ 36 fights [ 19kos] L0 D1] has been fighting , and sweating it out , in the hothouses of Indonesia since 1998. In that time , he has beaten every fighter, put in front of him at featherweight. One thing for sure,” the thin man” from Indonesia is a tough cookie, and is a natural featherweight, who carries his power into the last rounds of a fight.

In 2004, John traveled to Japan to challenge their national hero, Osamu Sato for his WBA featherweight belt. The fight went to the scorecards with John winning impressively to take the belt back to Indonesia.

Next up was the veteran American southpaw boxer, Derrick “Smoke” Gainer. Gainer was an experienced campaigner and had been in with a list of champs thus far in his career. Diego Corrales, Juan Manuel Marquez, and the 4 time world champion, Manual Medina. Gainer had been around the block.

John knew he would have to be the best he could possibly be , to keep his title, and he, alongside trainer, Craig Christian trained intensely for the big fight ahead. As I’ve said before, boxings a funny old game and at the last minute, Gainer pulled out. Six months later, Gainer and John would finally meet in the heat of Jakarta.

The wily experienced Gainer was outboxed in every department and again, Chris John had gone the distance , and won big.

This fight is a tough challenge by two tough men . Both can box, and both have been in wars over the years, and both men have been the championship 12 rounds , consistently in their last few fights. The only differences for me in this exciting match up is, has Tommy Browne made the weight strongly, and Chris John’s KO power and also his ability to keep his power through to the last rounds of the fight. If Browne has been successful in making the 126 limit strongly, then it will stand him in good stead for the long nights battle ahead. On the other side, if John connects with one of his bombs, it could be over , inside 6 rounds.