Anthony Joshua & Beyond: What Does 2018 Have In Store For Joseph Parker?
Joseph Parker will fight Anthony Joshua in Cardiff on March 31st, so April 1 in Aotearoa, with the IBF, WBA and WBO Heavyweight World Championship belts on the line. The formalities have been confirmed and the fight is officially happening. It was always going to. Both fighters are honest and competitive dudes, desperate to unite the division and take on the best. 50%, 40%, 35%, 30%... whatever. They were gonna sort it out eventually, one way or the other (sounds like something between 30-35% for Parker after all the bluster).
It’ll be a blockbuster fight and one that catapults Joe Parker into the top tier of boxing personalities – at least for a few months. Right now he’s a world champ but this is boxing where you can be a world champ and still be unproven/underrated/unknown. Two of those things will end in the ring on March 31. The other will be shredded in the whirlwind of hype that Anthony Joshua will bring to this unification bout, the first heavyweight unification bout between unbeaten fighters since Mike Tyson vs Tony Tucker in 1987. Hell of a way to begin a massive 2018.
Flashback to December 2016 when Parker beat Andy Ruiz to win the WBO Heavyweight Title. It was a fortuitous way to earn a belt to slap over the shoulder but you take whatever luck you can find in this sport and that belt was a ticket to monster paydays and enormous fights. The assumption was that JP would start fighting overseas, maybe even have a go at Anthony Joshua by the end of the next year. 2017, baby. It was all gonna happen.
Yeah, well… 2017 was pretty average for Parker. It began with a massive statement as Duco pumped the Furies for the purse in their mandatory challenge but then we had several months of stupidity to deal with before Hughie Fury was hurt and Razvan Cojanu stepped up at short notice. Parker dealt with him in unimpressive fashion then went to Manchester to get at Fury for real, winning that in a majority decision which featured a fair result but some skewed cards. And that was it.
Two fights in 2017, two unconvincing wins against folks he was expected to beat. He’s still 24-0 but nothing Parker did last year upped his stature from where he was when he beat Andy Ruiz. At best he stayed where he was but more likely it added to a loud pool of doubters still waiting to finally see Parker take on somebody legit, still waiting for him to prove his worth.
The wait is now over. There’s no more legit contender in the heavyweight division than Anthony Joshua, holder of two championship belts and an unspoiled 20-0 record, all 20 wins by knockout.
Joshua also fought twice in 2017. There was nothing special about how he beat Carlos Takam but his TKO of Wladimir Klitschko was arguably the fight of the year, recovering from some heavy blows to end the career of the Ukrainian legend in the eleventh round. Up until that fight, AJ had been in the same position as Parker finds himself now, the holder of a championship belt but one that had fallen into his hands by circumstance. He hadn’t really beaten anyone of note, maybe Dillian Whyte in the fight that earned him the shot at the title with Charles Martin (whom he knocked out in less than five minutes of ring time).
The difference is that Joshua was knocking jokers out, rather than being dragged around and frustrated for 12 rounds. That goes a long way in convincing folks, if you’re gonna fight weaker chaps then at least dominate them into the canvas. Although that’s also kind of what Joe Parker and his team are relying on in this fight: What happens when he comes up against somebody he can’t knockout? Will he have the ability to win it ugly? As much as Kevin Barry wants to yap about Joshua’s rusty-gate defence, as much as Parker is convinced he can knock this bloke out… it’s not gonna happen in the first couple rounds. He couldn’t even knock Cojanu out. If he’s decking Joshua then it’s coming late on after wearing him right out. Remember that Parker had to bring the fight to Cojanu and Fury – it’ll be a different tale against Joshua.
Funny that, because fitness and durability aren’t what BBC talk show host Graham Norton thought when he took a look at one of JP’s mugshots this week with Anthony Joshua on the show promoting his own massive 2018.
Obviously the opinion of a telly comedian reflects zero on the fight itself. Norton’s a very funny bloke but he’s not a boxing expert. So if you’re one of these people who got outrageously offended by a throwaway joke on a foreign talk show then, please, chill out a minute. Work on some breathing techniques, maybe start practising meditation. It’s pretty embarrassing when New Zealanders lose their sense of humour at the first hint of defensiveness.
Granted, those people probably don’t read The Niche Cache… those people are still reading the clickbait on Stuff/NZH and listening to Radio Sport. All goods, that lot can stay there while we do our educated thing over here. (Smack an ad! Donate on Patreon!).
But that sort of exposure is what Joshua is already used to and what Parker is very quickly going to have to get used to. Joshua’s done the talk show thing before, he’s a household name in the UK thanks to the Klitschko fight while Parker is a household name in New Zealand and nowhere else. Joshua is a spokesman for worldwide brands (Beats, Under Armour, Lynx, etc.) while Joseph Parker is the Burger King. Not really the same thing.
It’ll be extremely easy to get swept up in the celebrity factor and become distracted by the press jabs. He’s fighting in Britain and the British papers are not gonna be on his side. Opportunities outside of boxing will emerge and not all of them helpful. Joe seems like one of those guys who prefers the monastic life in the lead in to a fight and he’s about to have diversions flying at him like Joshua jabs.
That’s all for he and the team to deal with. In three months’ time this fight will be over and Parker will either have won or lost. The AJ-JP bout will determine how the rest of Parker’s year goes because all indications are that there’ll be a rematch clause, allowing for a contractually-obliged second swing at things if Parker upends the current champ (Joshua has more belts + is fighting in his home country = he’s the champ in the matter), with Parker getting a substantially better slice of the financial pie next time if that happens. Beat AJ and Parker will probably have to go at him again and prove it but in return he’ll make so much bloody money that he’ll never have to worry about it again. Plus we’d have a genuine rivalry at the top of the heavyweight division.
The thing is, both guys also wanted to get at Deontay Wilder, the WBC belt holder and the last piece of the puzzle. Parker vs Wilder didn’t make a huge amount of financial sense yet because neither are on the same plane in their own nations as Joshua is in his, so it was all about which one AJ chose to fight next. Parker had already laid his cards on the table to working on his profile in England ahead of the Hughie Fury bout. Parker it is, then.
AJ’s still keen on Wilder though and if he’s able to despatch with the kiwi in easy enough fashion then he’ll move straight onto the American. If it’s a close one then they might come back for fight two anyway, supposing the fan interest is there, although that might depend on Joshua going and beating Wilder in between, we’d have to see how everyone’s feeling.
And if that’s the case and Parker gets whalloped then the last three-quarters of his 2018 are gonna have to be spent in rebuild mode. How do we get this career back on track? What’s the best way to revive the hype? It’ll mean no shot at Wilder in the short term… however it’d hardly be a disaster either.
Parker’s getting this opportunity very early in his life as a boxer. He’s only 26 years old. And this isn’t like Tua vs Lewis either, Parker’s got some clout in this contest, he’s coming in as an established champ (established in honours, at least). If he wins, he probably gets a rematch, otherwise he moves straight on to Deontay Wilder. If he loses then… well, then he enters a pool of fringe talents who’ve been beaten by Joshua or Wilder, or are on the simultaneous come-up. It’s a step back but nothing much else... depending on how badly he loses, of course.
Dillian Whyte, Dominic Breazeale, Tony Bellew, Jarrell Miller, Kubrat Pulev, Christian Hammer, Adam Kownacki and Charles Martin are all hanging around. There’s Lucas Browne hanging around for a Parker fight like a stray cat hoping for scraps (Browne’s fighting Whyte a week before AJ vs JP). Luis Ortiz slugs as hard as anyone and he’s finally gonna fight Deontay Wilder next if all goes as planned. Lose that and he’s in an identical place to Parker… only a dozen years older. Parker might not come out of this fight with his belt but as long as he doesn’t get smashed then he stays on the scene.
Whatever happens, this year is already living up to all the expectations that 2017 didn’t.
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