Judgment call ‘common sense’
Marc Hinton The Joseph Parker camp have had a victory, even before stepping in the boxing ring against Dillian Whyte in London tomorrow.
Parker’s promoter David Higgins and trainer Kevin Barry have succeeded with their play to remove a contentious, non-active, WBC-recommended Canadian judge from the panel for the fight. Earlier this week they lobbied heavily for fight bosses to take a sensible approach on this.
Higgins said their call to have the WBC’s preferred judge taken off had worked, and that he had been replaced by what they saw as more reputable French official Christophe Fernandez.
‘‘Thankfully common sense has prevailed and the judge that concerned us isn’t going to be involved,’’ Higgins said. ‘‘I can confirm that Team Parker are largely happy with the panel of officials.’’
Fernandez will be joined by Phil Austin (Australia) and Steve Gray (UK) in scoring the fight, to be refereed by experienced Briton Ian John-Lewis.
During the press conference Higgins had raised a few eyebrows by suggesting that Parker would have to battle more than just bruising London heavyweight Whyte.
‘‘Parker has a bit more on his plate than Dillian Whyte. Dillian only has to fight Joseph Parker; Joseph has to fight Dillian and the officials,’’ Higgins said.
‘‘Why do I say that? Twice we’ve been in the UK and the first time a controversial referee is changed at the last minute, and second time Eddie Hearn even said the referee for the Joshua fight was a disgrace.’’
Later Higgins refused to back down from his stance on drawing some questionable decisions in this part of the world.
‘‘The track record of Team Parker in the UK would show that twice we’ve been here and twice there’s been a controversy. The first time they put the house referee in who had refereed Hughie Fury’s last two fights and it got changed at the last minute. The second time everyone agrees the ref was a disgrace.
‘‘So, two out of two have involved a level of disgrace. Forgive us for feeling nervous about the officials.’’