Joseph Parker vs Dillian Whyte: Defeat Number Two
This was never going to be an easy one for either fighter, Joseph Parker and Dillian Whyte are top drawer contenders. One loss each on their resumes and they were both against Anthony Joshua. Depending on whether you were reading the news in England or Aotearoa the predicted outcomes varied but it seems fair to say that Parker was a narrow favourite.
First round performance and that was exactly what we saw. Parker came out looking busy and looking swift and he was getting in and out, dodging those counters, leaving plenty of tasters on the flesh of his opponent. Boxing bouts answer questions and the questions around Whyte were around whether his size would inhibit his fitness and whether his power could rustle Parker, a guy who had never been knocked down before, not even against Anthony Joshua. First round, with Smokin’ Joe working him around the ring, and those questions seemed easy to assess.
Instead for the next ten rounds the questions we got answers to were all about Joseph Parker. And here’s what we learned: Joseph Parker’s lack of power in the top tier of the heavyweight division is a significant problem. Whyte was able to get into the fight after a slow first because he was able to throw heavy counter punches and force Parker to slow down to a more relatable pace. But when Parker needed to alter the flow of the fight he just couldn’t manage it.
In fact for most of this fight it was a frustrating watch. Parker looking laidback and passive while Whyte roughed him up. He wasn’t laidback or passive though, instead he was roadblocked. Forget about that first knockdown, that was a clash of heads. Parker got himself into a bad position where he was left vulnerable but it wasn’t a fatal error. That came later on as he was knocked down for real in the ninth and with it his hopes of saving this thing effectively died.
The judges scored it 113-112, 115-110 and 114-111, unanimous for Whyte, but Parker clearly won the first and last rounds. Chuck on the points docked for knockdowns and that means that those judges had the middle rounds scored 6-4, 8-2 and 7-3 to Whyte. Thorough domination in the meaty middle. Whyte is not necessarily a better boxer than Parker but he earned this one with a great performance, possibly his best as a pro, beating down Joseph Parker and withstanding everything that came back the other way until he had him on the deck again. And that brings us to our second lesson, friends: contrary to all the evidence we’d had before it turns out that Parker does actually feel pain.
He got through Anthony Joshua largely unscathed but that was down to the way the fight was refereed and the way that Joshua chose to approach it. He fought within himself for a better chance at victory and that’s what he got. So, sure, Joshua coulda done a lot more to hurt Parker if he’d needed to. Dillian Whyte needed to and he did, over and over again. Whyte proved here that he has elite power. Parker proved that he does not and maybe never will.
A few hours after this bout, Razvan Cojanu took on Luis Ortiz and you probably remember that Parker had a dull twelve-round win over Cojanu a while back. Parker ran him around, throwing quick jabs, as the Romanian spent his time clinching and taunting. He did the same against Ortiz but Ortiz is a body snatcher like Whyte and he went bang with the swinging right and boom with the straight left, two punches midway through the second round and it was all over, quick as that. Bang, boom, ding ding ding. Parker never even threatened that against Cojanu. He didn’t have the power. Same as he didn’t have the here when he needed it. Elite power is not the be all and end all in boxing but it does mean you’re never out of a fight, never anything but one almighty swing away from flipping the momentum of any bout.
Oh but Parker almost got him in the end. For most of the second half of the fight he’d looked uncharacteristically sluggish, probably because of the pain he was taking, but it still took a bloody monster truck of punches to rattle him and Whyte was absolutely gassed by the end. Parker was struggling to keep his hands flying but through some desperate last wind he managed to unleash upon his tired opponent, rustling the dude before straight up dropping him near the end. But he ran out of time. Just goes to show how close he was. One more minute and he mighta had this. If only he’d exhausted him earlier, if only…
But nah, can’t dwell on those things. Parker couldn’t have gone ballistic on him earlier because Whyte was shutting that down with ruthless counter shots. Parker only got him when he did because Whyte had nothing left. What we get to take from those final rounds is proof that Parker isn’t out of his depth against these top contenders, he can compete. But competing and winning are two different things. He’s now been dispatched in consecutive fights and as the heavyweight division continues to shrink from absolute chaos a couple years ago to a much more clarified peak he’s now a long way down on that hill. We can talk about his next steps later in the week though.
The fact is that Parker got beaten by a better fighter on the day and that’s all there is to it. Whyte is legit and he’s going to give AJ some worries if he gets his rematch. He might even win it, no jokes. Whyte’s improved heaps since he lost to Joshua last time. Unfortunately we haven’t seen the same degree of development from Joe as a fighter since he beat Andy Ruiz for the WBO heavyweight title, although none of those fights until this one really allowed him the chance.
Parker got to the top with a stroke of fortune and an abandoned belt. He was good enough to stay there until he met someone good enough to beat him and now he’s dropped back to back scraps. Was it a mistake to fight someone like Whyte so soon after his first defeat? Perhaps. But that was the risk he took. There are more lessons to learn from this fight than there have been from possibly all his previous fights put together and that’s where we are now. We now know where Parker stands in this division. We know how he compares to his top tier peers. Next thing is to get better and come back for them.
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