Heavyweight Chaos at Croke Park: Carty vs. Allen Ends in No-Contest
On a night built for farewells and coronations, heavyweight chaos stole the early spotlight.
More than 83,000 packed into Croke Park on Saturday, a sea of Irish green humming in anticipation of Katie Taylor’s final walk. Before that, though, came the big men: popular British campaigner Dave Allen and Dublin’s own Thomas Carty, handed a stage that most heavyweights only ever dream about.
It lasted 80 seconds.
A Spectacle Turns Surreal
They had barely begun to feel each other out when the bout veered into the bizarre. Two clinches, a couple of awkward exchanges, and suddenly Carty was no longer in the ring at all. The local favorite tumbled through the ropes, crashed onto a bench and then the floor, and lay there, stunned and tangled, as Croke Park tried to make sense of what it had just seen.
“I did get clipped in the back of the head the first time [in the first clinch] and thought nothing of it,” Carty told Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “Ended up in a clinch [again] and just at that moment, I got caught with another punch in the back of the head within 10-15 seconds, and next thing I knew I was upside down, falling out of the ring.”
He remembers the impact more than the fall.
“I remember hitting a bench or something on the way down, and then again down onto the ground.”
Carty, now 11-1 with 9 knockouts, said he suffered injuries to the back of his head and neck. He tried to get up, tried to re-enter the ring, but his leg was trapped under a stool amid the chaos at ringside. By the time doctors and officials swarmed around him, the momentum of the moment had gone. So had the fight.
“The whole thing happened so fast — I just remember looking up, and there were like 20 people,” he said. “People in the ring looking down, photographers looking, ringside doctors looking, about 20 different people talking, and my coach was there as well.”
The ringside physician advised that he should not continue. The referee waved it off. The Croke Park undercard had its first no-contest, and one of the strangest heavyweight endings in recent memory.
Confusion in the Ring, Fury in the Stands
Up in the ring, Allen was as bewildered as anyone.
“At the time, I weren’t really sure what was going off,” he admitted. “It was half a round, and he went flying out of the ring. Weren’t really sure what was going off, weren’t sure if I was going to get disqualified, weren’t sure if I won the fight — weren’t really sure at all.”
The referee, the ringside doctor and the local commission conferred at length. On a night of high emotion, the delay only added to the tension. If the officials ruled that Carty had gone through the ropes from a legal blow, Allen — now 27-9 with 20 KOs — could have walked away with a quick, if contentious, victory. If they deemed the shot to the back of the head intentional or the direct cause of injury, the Irishman might have been awarded a win that would have lit up the debate for weeks.
Instead, the referee called it what he saw it as: an unintentional accident. No-contest.
Croke Park did not agree.
When the replay flashed up on the big screens, slow motion told its own story to the home crowd. Two punches, both landing around the back of the head, one clinch turning into another, and then Carty disappearing through the ropes. The boos poured down, directed squarely at Allen.
Many of Carty’s supporters have made up their minds. In their view, the illegal shots were deliberate and directly responsible for the fall.
Rough, Not Dirty?
Allen pushed back on that narrative.
“I’m a rough fighter, not a dirty fighter,” he said. “I’m pretty rough. Half the time I’m not looking where I’m punching, I just want to hit you.
“The first one went around the back of his head, but he was ducking into the shot. The second one, he rushed me and put his head down. I threw the right hand at his ear, he turned into it, and it hit him on the back of the head.”
Carty stopped short of accusing Allen of a calculated foul, but he did not let him off the hook.
“I don’t know [if he did it on purpose],” Carty said. “I don’t think he necessarily said, ‘Right, I’m going to punch Thomas on the back of the head.’ But that’s what happened.
“I think [he was trying to utilize], like, old man tactics. He was obviously trying to clip me around the back of the ear, but it was just unnecessary, man. Completely unnecessary.”
Allen, for his part, rejected the idea that Carty had looked for a way out.
“I don’t believe [he was looking for a way out],” he said. “I spoke to Thomas, and he told me that he didn’t. I’m inclined to believe him. He’s a fighter, and I have to believe what he tells me. I have no hard feelings toward him, and that’s that, really.”
Online Accusations and a Fighter’s Frustration
Outside the arena, the court of social media went to work. Clips circulated. Opinions hardened. Some skeptics accused Carty of quitting, a claim that has clearly cut deep.
“The tone seems to be [online] that from the fight, I didn’t fancy it and was looking for a way out,” Carty said.
He does not see how anyone can reach that conclusion from such a brief, frantic spell of action.
“What part in the whole fight, for the short time that it lasted, did I not fancy? Because — as far as I could see, having watched the fight back — it was me throwing punches and landing. The only two punches I got caught with were on the back of the head.”
For Carty, the suggestion that he would throw away a night like Croke Park is more than an insult. It clashes with everything he has clawed back from injury.
“It’s just absurd [thinking I would try and throw the fight],” he said. “Having been sidelined for so long, after being injured, it took so much effort to get back — so much commitment from not just me but my team. My team has sacrificed so much time, alongside my own time.
“Financially, it was a massive commitment to get back from the ACL [injury], the training that we put in. The pay isn’t amazing at this level of fights. I was gambling on getting the bigger fight after this one. I was fully prepared and fully ready to take this one. I thought I would be sitting here today, planning the next move. And all I can think about right now is getting the rematch.”
One Man Wants a Rematch. The Other Wants to Move On.
Carty’s position is simple: he wants Allen again. This time with no freak falls, no medical confusion, and a result that leaves no room for debate. After Saturday’s bizarre ending and the attention it generated, a rematch would sell. It could even stand alone at the top of a bill rather than tucked beneath a legend’s farewell.
Allen is unmoved.
“I know they want the rematch ... [but] there’s nothing in it for me,” he said. “I took the Croke Park fight because they offered me a deal for some of my fighters to box on their shows. I got six slots. ... That was why I took the fight. That was the only reason, as well.”
For many fighters, a no-contest is an itch that never quite goes away. The public wants closure, the boxers want to settle the argument. Allen doesn’t feel that pull. At 32, with miles on the clock and a cult following already secured, his ambitions have narrowed.
He told Uncrowned he has only one or two fights left in him. His eyes are on the British heavyweight title, not a return to the scene of a freak accident.
That leaves Allen vs. Carty in limbo, suspended between controversy and curiosity — a heavyweight story that might never get its final chapter.
