Parker proves himself the bigger man
Joseph Parker said he lost to the bigger man but don’t believe a word of it. The New Zealander fought with bravery and soul and then took his defeat with a grace that did the country – and Samoa – proud. Parker lost to the better boxer but I doubt there was a bigger man among the 78,000 people inside the Millenium Stadium.
So maybe Parker didn’t knock the bugger off. Anthony Joshua was too big a man mountain to climb but Parker was the first boxer to go all 12 rounds with Joshua in his professional career and there was some nobility in that. Parker may have won his three previous fights but this defeat was a much better performance than any of those scrappy victories against secondrate opponents.
Joshua said of Parker before the fight: ‘‘Is being quick and able to punch enough to make him the best heavyweight in the world? Don’t think so.’’
The Brit was right about that one. Against the very best Parker just does not have a big enough reach or a big enough punch.
This loss must have seemed horribly like deja vu for trainer Kevin Barry. When his boxer David Tua fought Lennox Lewis in 2000, Tua could not cope with the length and brutality of the jab. It was the same for Parker. Joshua did not stop him, but it was a more accomplished performance in terms of pure boxing than we have sometimes seen from the Brit.
Joshua kept snapping Parker’s head back with that long and brutal jab. You only had to look at the faces of the two men after the fight to know who had won, although some of Parker’s best work in the middle rounds was to the body of Joshua.
The Brit said afterwards his strategy was to jab, because a right hand might take a boxer round the block but a good left jab would take him around the world. It took him to a unanimous and crushing points victory over Parker, a decision hard to quarrel with.
Heavyweight David Haye was nearly right when he predicted; ‘‘When you’re in there, Anthony Joshua is an absolute monster of a man. The reality of Joshua, once he starts punching the face, gets real pretty quick. Everybody has an idea, everybody is confident they have the key to beat Anthony Joshua, and every person who has tried has ended up unconscious.’’
Not Joseph Parker. He took some big left hands and a couple of uppercuts inside, but he didn’t come close to going down. He proved he has one of the best chins in the business. You just hope that durability doesn’t hurt Parker in the future. The big question now is who will want to fight him going forwards.
It’s not going to be Joshua. He was already calling out Deontay Wilder in order to unify the belts. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn accused Wilder of dodging Joshua. But Hearn wants Wilder to fight Dillian Whyte first, after Whyte destroyed Australian Lucas Browne the previous week. Wilder says he will take on Whyte if the fight comes with a clause that guarantees that the winner will fight Joshua.
But none of that is of any interest to Parker right now. His problem, and the problem of his manager David Higgins, is where can they go now? Parker said he would work harder, train harder and ‘‘would love to have another go’’, but against whom?
Parker’s recent fights have been very short on entertainment. New Zealand does not have a big pay-per-view audience compared to the other big boxing countries. What a contrast Parker’s future is with that of Joshua. The Briton is talking about a museum to inspire future generations. He is talking of refurbishing the Finchley gym so that a kid like he once was, chopping wood on community service for a drug offence, might have somewhere to go.
Joshua is box office. Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship president, who was at ringside to watch the fight, called Joshua ‘‘the most marketable guy in world boxing’’. The UFC are talking about paying Joshua NZ$69 million when his contract with Hearn expires in a year’s time.
Joshua says, ‘‘A fight is a fight . . . yeah, man, I’d do it’’.
The heavyweight scene has not been this exciting for an age. The fight between Alexander Povetkin, the mandatory challenger to Joshua, and David Price on the undercard was a banger. Whyte would scare anyone and has had Joshua in trouble before. And the fight between Wilder and Luis Ortiz a month ago was another epic. If Parker is even to get a taste of all these riches, Higgins is going to have to perform miracles. All the great heavyweights in history, and of course Parker is not in that category, have been beaten at least once with the exception of Rocky Marciano. And at the age of 26 Parker deserves another shot. But where’s the value in it for his opponent?