Anthony Joshua vs Joseph Parker: Can’t Hit Him If You Can’t Reach Him
If Anthony Joshua really does have a glass chin then we’re still waiting to see it. Joseph Parker and his team talked it up the whole way through the build-up, talked up that knockout victory too, but Joseph Parker and Kevin Barry (plus a few other people with the last names Parker and Barry) seemed to be the only ones who actually believed that Parker could get the KO. Most international pundits were leaning the other way towards an Anthony Joshua-enforced stoppage.
Guess what? That didn’t happen either. It was Joshua on points, the first time he’s gone twelve rounds in his professional career. The judges scored it 118-100, 118-110 and 119-109 which is probably more skewed than it needed to be but nobody’s gonna argue that the judges gave him a raw deal on the result. AJ was too good. He was better on the day. Parker said so himself.
What matters is that Parker did his reputation no damage. He fought with spirit and determination, with a strong game plan that caused Joshua a couple issues every now and then. It’s bloody hard when you’re up against a guy who has both significant reach and power advantages and Joe did the expected thing by moving heaps early on, trying to drag Joshua about. But Joshua didn’t bite. He lived behind that left jab and showed immense discipline and patience not to break from that strategy, no matter how loud the crowd got. Parker simply couldn’t reach him and spent plenty of energy swinging at fresh air which meant that Joshua could score all day on him. First three rounds and that’s basically how it went.
Sweet as, the first few rounds are often for feeling each other out and particularly in a massive title clash. But Parker’s problem was that he couldn’t engage Joshua enough. He was running circles around the ring and jumping in and out with his jab while dodging Joshua’s own swinging counters and all that AJ did was casually stalk him from the centre. Both dudes came in way underweight from their previous bouts so you knew they were each expecting a long one. Parker’s best chance involved using his superior fitness to tire the Brit down and pick him off as the rounds got deeper and deeper. Instead Joshua cancelled that out by showing up in arguably the best shape of his career (same can be said for Parker… but this was one of his few blatant advantages and now it was gone).
Parker’s best rounds came in the fifth, sixth and seventh. He came out more aggressive, reassured by absorbing whatever Joshua threw at him early, and actually managed to rough up the hometown hero some. A couple slamming right-hooks in particular, damn. He might have even carried on towards something special but for a couple of factors – one already determined and the other soon to take greater prominence.
The first was that he’d dropped too many rounds to stage a comeback. He started too tentatively against a fighter who simply wasn’t going to run out of gas like it was hoped he would, meaning that beginning on the backfoot like he did made for zero favours. The second was that the referee, for whatever reason, didn’t want to see the fighters doing anything on the inside. He was breaking things up almost immediately. With AJ having the reach and controlling the distance so well, that worked way more in the favour of AJ than JP. Can’t complain, it’s just the way the ref was calling it. The best champions can win in a variety of ways. Parker was always at a disadvantage here and he needed things to break in a particular way for him to triumph. They didn’t.
And so Joshua was able to get his jab going again and claim most of the latter rounds, taking this thing towards an almost anti-climactic end. In a hypothetical rematch we’d probably see Parker look to take a couple more risks than he did in the first four rounds but then how’s he supposed to know where he stands against an opponent like that when he’s never faced anyone with anywhere near the destructive strength of Anthony Joshua before? (By the way: Wilder > Joshua when it comes to power). We know now that Parker has world class durability. We know that his hand-speed is elite and his footwork and fitness pretty great. He doesn’t really have knockout ability against the top guys but he’s going to give them plenty to worry about with his counter-punching, particularly that swinging right. It’s just that those things couldn’t overcome a six-inch difference in reach that allowed Joshua to dictate distances the whole way.
This is a dip in Parker’s career arc only because he loses a belt that he was in the right place at the right time to win 17 months ago. No dramas there, he lost it to a better fighter. But Parker went the distance without a blemish on his ‘Never Been Dropped’ status against a fighter who’d knocked out every other bloke he’s ever stepped into a professional ring with. Including Wladimir Klitschko. Including Dillion Whyte. Including Carlos Takam.
As for the tenuous entertainment factor of the fight, it was a criticism that copped onto Parker following his sloppy win over Hughie Fury (another fight in which an opponent’s tactics kinda determined the way things went, Parker unable to hurt him enough to change that) but it won’t be a thing he’s gotta deal with after this one because the ref is taking all that heat. Joseph Parker gets to be the guy who fought valiantly despite his long odds. Nobody really knew who he was before but they do now, in a funny way he’s come out better this way. He won’t have to fight Deontay Wilder in the short term, that’s a positive too. Oh and the money. That’s always nice.
Honestly, there’s no reason Parker’s career’s gonna take a permanent hit from this. He drops down from the top trio of dudes but he got there by beating Andy Ruiz who probably isn’t even a top ten heavyweight so fair enough, really. He’s still in prime position to take on the likes of Dillion Whyte, Jarrell Miller, Adam Kownacki or Dominic Breazeale. A matchup with Alexander Povetkin, who is likely to be Joshua’s next mandatory, would be pretty enticing – a heavy-hitter who wouldn’t tower over him, albeit one with some PED question marks – after Povetkin basically ended David Price’s career on the undercard.
It’s tricky to predict how this defeat will be felt in the kiwi media because Parker’s name’s been built on some occasionally undeserved hype in the past. His undefeated record got overrated so losing it might also get overrated. Fact is that you’ve gotta accept when the better man wins and Parker was pretty gracious in defeat… but he’s also the second youngest bloke in BoxRec’s top 20 heavyweights so if you think this isn’t a lesson to be learned from and an opportunity to come back stronger and improved then you’re about as mental as Eddie Hearn will be if he can’t get Joshua vs Wilder booked in.
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