It’s fair to see Dave Allen is feeling anxious about his Saturday fight with Arslanbek Makhmudov.

The Doncaster heavyweight is topping the bill at the Sheffield Arena in the pressure is on for him to deliver in front of 8,000 fans.

“When I fought David Price, I’d already agreed to fight [Alexander] Povetkin in 2019, but you know what, I was 27, but I was like a 12-year-old boy when I was 27. I literally had the brain of a 12-year-old, so I couldn’t really take in what it meant at the time.

“I went missing for five or six weeks before. I don’t know, I had no appreciation of money and time, really. I didn’t really care, to be honest. I didn’t have a care in the world, but now I’m shitting myself, to be honest. Yeah, really bad. Yeah, really shitting myself, actually.

“This fella’s really dangerous and that, and I’ve trained really hard. This’ll be the first time where if I get beat, it’s like, I’m not as good as I maybe hoped I was. I think this fella’s like a top 20 guy. He’s a bit off the very top. I think he’s a fair bit off the very top, but if I beat him, I have to be in the conversation of being a very good fighter, and I’ve always thought I could be on my day. This is my day. I’m 33. I've trained hard, so I’m nervous. I’m nervous for two reasons. One, I think he’s a dangerous fight. This is a fella that’s going to come and look for me, and two, if I lose, I’m not sure if it’s [whether] I’m not as good as I thought I was, but I’m not as good as I hoped I was.”

Allen, always open and self-deprecating, told assembled journalists on a media call today that he’d never been so nervous.

“No, never,” he said. “Unill probably the first Johnny Fisher fight, I never had a care in the world. I was just doing the boxing for the crack, really. It was what it was. It was a good time for me. I had a good time, and I boxed because it was something to do, but now it’s like I say it’s my job now. I’ve got a contract that says if I lose, I can come back. I can come back to good fights and that, but I really want to win, and what’s making me more nervous is Sheffield Arena. We’ve got about 8,000 tickets. Me and Ed [promoter Eddie Hearn] thought we’d do about 2,000, and that was a worry. That was only going to do a couple of thousand, and I don’t want to let them all down, really. I don’t want them to go home sad. I want them to go home happy, and so, yeah, that means more to me. For me, winning, people say, ‘oh, the money, all that.’ It’s not really about that. I want to send everyone home happy. That’s what would make me happy. I want everyone to come to Sheffield and want to come back again.”

Allen is an ever-changing man. Trainer Jamie Moore says he’s applied himself like never before, and Allen admits he’s found a maturity in life that he’s not had before.
“My ego left me when I started losing fights,” Allen admitted. “And I started becoming a nicer person. The actual desire to fight left me a long time ago. Luckily, I have to train now, because what got me through hard fights and beating some good fighters was the fact that I was a bit of a bastard. I could fight, but now I have to train now. That’s the honest truth. “People say, ‘why have you started training now?’ I have to, because the edge I had before had a bit of an edge to me… That’s gone now, so I have to train, to be honest.”

It has been a hard road. He’s been a pro since 2012. What top names he has not faced for real, he has sparred. He’s crossed swords with the best, and some off second best many times. His record is a colorful 24-7-2 (19 KOs) and it tells its own story. That story is one that would have been very different if he could do it again.

“If I was 16-and-a-half again and just finished my GCSEs at school, I would never have boxed. I wouldn’t have boxed. I wouldn’t do it all again. It’s been too hard, to be honest. Boxing, because I’m all right now… I’m actually a good adult. I’m an adult now. I’ve got kids. I look after my kids. I have an adult life. I can do normal things. But from being 16 until about 28, boxing was just too hard for me, mentally. It did a lot of good things for me. But really, if I had my time again, I’d have just gone and done something completely different with my time. I couldn’t handle it. I can handle it now. But it was really hard, actually.”

Coach Jamie Moore has saluted Allen’s application, and the trainer admitted that it was mostly down to where Allen’s head is and where he is in his life as opposed to how special their chemistry is, even though they are clearly close.

“I’ve trained everywhere,” admitted Allen. “I think if I’d have gone to Jamie’s at 21, it wouldn’t have made a difference. I had Peter Fury training me at one point, and I had a lot of respect for him, and I was also scared to death of him as well. He can tell you off, him, when he wants to. I’ve had Peter train me, Darren Barker, world champion. I’ve had some of the best trainers train me, but I think it was my age, really. I was very immature. I was a bit off the wall, and I weren’t ready. To be honest, me Nan passing away was probably a big thing [in him growing up]. I hit the lottery with Johnny Fisher. I just hit the lottery, really, I felt. I was about the same for the Fisher fight as I was for Frazer Clark, but I couldn’t beat Frazer Clark, but I could beat Johnny Fisher. That’s given me a chance to have a few camps. “If I don’t like something, I’ll tell you, or I won't do it. Jay [Jamie Moore]’s had a big effect on me, big effect. I started training boxers myself, training and managing fighters. I ended up training and managing kids that are probably better than me, have more talent than me. I thought, I need to do better. Between loads of things, Jamie, my missus, the kids, my nan passing, all of it really rolled into one. It just matured me at the right time.”

Allen, however, openly admits that he still struggles with mental health and he can be up one minute and down the next. The day before Allen fights, Ricky Hatton will be laid to rest and Allen is uncertain how closely the ties that bind boxing and depression are, but he knows he will find it hard to walk away when he is faced with that decision. 

“I’m very fortunate, really, because I’ve always been good at fighting all my life, but I’m actually soft as shit, really,” Allen explained. “Everyone knows that. Do you know what I mean? I’ve always been mentally very weak, really. I got stronger with time, but I’ve always been mentally very weak. I’m very sensitive, so I have no issue in telling people that either. I was very lucky. I got through a lot of bad times in my early 20s, really. I think without my honesty on how I was feeling and what was going on, I might possibly have struggled to come out the other side of it as well, really. I don’t really want to over-dramatize it, but I feel very fortunate that I’m still here, really. When I was younger, I was really up the wall, actually. I look back now and I think, ‘Fuck it, I don’t even remember who I was.’ It’s very difficult. Sometimes people will say, ‘Remember when you did this?’ And I think, ‘Not really.’ “It’s very hard for me now to talk about it because sometimes I don’t even recognize the person I was because I was such a different person. I retired for six months and I had to come back. Do you know what I mean? I never made big money the first time. I guess I did compared to lots of boxers on the small loss, so that may not be a good thing to say. It’s a very hard thing to leave alone. That’s why I did the training and managing, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave it [boxing]. I wouldn’t be able to leave it. It is an issue. I didn’t have a clue what to do with my money. I spunked it all up the wall. That’s an issue. You find things to replace it. I’ve done it all backwards, really. I would lose all my money before I had any and I threw it all out and ended up fighting everyone to pay everyone back, so I did it all backwards. It’s a difficult one because people always talk to me and I think, it’s so hard, I’m out of it now. It’s my kids that got me out of it, really. It’s a difficult subject because things like that are going to keep happening because boxing is like a drug. You get addicted to it and it’s hard to leave alone. I can’t leave it alone. I’ll probably be boxing until I’m 46 in Europe somewhere. Probably. I know it. I know it. I fucking love it. I hate boxing but I love it so much. It is hard to leave alone.”

And while Allen is preparing for the fight of his life and the stage is once again set for him, he considers himself the underdog on Saturday.

“If we’re being completely honest, Makhmudov as even money? I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Makhmudov should be about 10-1 on. You know what I mean? That’s the honest truth. I couldn’t believe the odds but it makes me feel popular because I know people are betting on me because they like me. Makhmudov, I’m an odds guy, I’m a maths guy. He should be 10 to 1 on, I should be 11-2 against.”

As with the current trend in boxing, there is always discussion about what might be in the fight after. If Allen wins, there has been talks of Deontay Wilder and of Anthony Joshua.

“I just, I can’t even think about Wilder,” said Allen. “Makhmudov actually scares me. I think I’ve boxed better fighters. I think [Luis] Ortiz was better. I think the [Tony] Yoka I boxed was better. David Price was a better boxer. People keep saying to me, ‘Makhmudov’s going to fall over when you hit him in the body.’ [Agit] Kabayel fucking belted him about 60 times to the body. Like, [as if they’re saying] ‘one of those ones, it’s going to be over.’ I’m dreading Saturday, dreading it. I can’t even think about Wilder. I’m dreading it. I’m shitting myself. I hope he’s not fucking massive. I look at it from the outside, looking in. I’m well up against it. But we know how to beat him.” 

Whatever happens, Allen has enjoyed incredible success from boxing. Has he grown up enough and in time to make the most of it? Even he cannot believe where he has managed to get to. 

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I look outside my bedroom window, you see the house over the other side of the road. Mental. Can’t believe it. That’s what makes me the most happy, actually, because my house is nice and that, but I look out of my bedroom window, you see the house on the other side. Well, the houses on the other side of the road are nicer than my side of the road. But I can’t believe it, really. I wake up every morning. Takes me a good 30 seconds to get downstairs. That’s how big it is. Unbelievable. And then I get downstairs and I’ve got two kids and they’re wonderful lookers. Do you know what I mean? So it’s amazing. I have a normal life and I could never imagine having a normal life. I never had a normal life until I was about 31, 32. Then I started to be a bit normal and started to calm down. People still think I’m mad now, but obviously it’s just different. I’m always going to be a bit eccentric, but I have a normal life now and I’m so grateful for it. I want people to be happy. So it’s not really, it's not so much about the money or the titles. I want people to be happy.”
The thing is with Allen, you never know what you’re going to get. The stage has been set for him before and he’s squandered it all before.

“Because sometimes I turn up and have a stinker, I'll be honest,” he added. “So yeah, I’m aware I’ve wasted most of my career. I’m aware I’ve let a lot of people down.”

Will he self-sabotage this time? 

“Well, I can’t promise anything. I can’t promise it,” he said. “No, absolutely not. Definitely not. There have been times in this camp, if it weren't for Jay, there have been times in this camp where I’d have fucked it off and gone home. There have been times in this camp where I’d have gone mental. But I haven’t. I want to self-sabotage all the time. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. I love it. I love, sometimes, I enjoy doing the four rounds on a small hall. I enjoy it sometimes. I’ve got to come back again. That’s just how I am. I want to win Saturday though, I’ll be honest. I do want to win.”

Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.