Job done – now
A victorious Joseph Parker got the thumbs-up from Eddie Hearn and now wants his British promoter to organise a meaningful fight as quickly as possible.
Parker overpowered North American heavyweight champion Shawndell Winters with a fifth round TKO in Frisco, Texas, yesterday and immediately set his sights on bigger things.
Parker felt he had laid the platform for 2020 with the resounding win that came after a frustrating eight-month absence from the ring because of illness and struggles to find suitable fights.
He hardly looked rusty in seeing off the unheralded Winters, flooring him in the second round and then finishing him with a deadly four-punch combination late in the fifth round of an entertaining fight.
Parker said Hearn was quick to congratulate him.
‘‘Eddie said ‘good work, I want to look at another fight soon’.’’
That suits Parker fine. He would like to be back in the ring in May-june.
Fighting down the card in Texas but showing his class, the 28-year-old former WBO champion said he didn’t want another tune-up. He wants an opponent from the top tier.
‘‘I know I belong there. If we fight someone in the top five or top 10 we will lift our game, hopefully we can lock someone in who is right up there,’’ said Parker, nursing a cut over his right eye from a fourth-round skirmish.
He remains eager to fight Britain’s Dereck Chisora after having to pull out of their London fight late last year because of a spider bite.
‘‘Chisora was a real opponent and we’ve wanted him for a long time. There’s Dillian Whyte,
‘‘I back myself against anyone.’’ Joseph Parker
Andy Ruiz, Alexander Povetkin . . . there are a lot of heavyweights out there, we will see who wants it,’’ Parker said.
Chisora is locked in to fight Ukrainian star Oleksandr Usyk in late May, so that will take him out of the equation for now, though the division is very fluid at the top as the jostle for the belts belonging to Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury intensifies.
If Joshua is forced to vacate the WBO belt, Usyk and Parker,