You know what? Shout out to Razvan Cojanu. He didn’t put up a huge amount of fight against Joseph Parker on the weekend but things were hardly stacked in his favour. He had 12 days to prepare for a world title shot, it’s not an opportunity anyone in his position is ever turning down but there’s also a reason that a person in his position was the one asked to fill in for the truant Hughie Fury.

Much was made about the fact that Parker and Cojanu had done about a hundy rounds across a few different sparring sessions in the past. Think of all the secret info they might have on each other… except that Cojanu was probably playing a role in them spars, definitely the recent one. He’d have been doing a Hughie Fury impersonation for Joe. And anything Joe would’ve picked up woulda been offset by anything Raz picked up and vice versa. The main drama was that in twelve days neither had the opportunity to fully prepare a plan to beat the other and the fight was pretty dull as a result.

Razvan’s defensive tactics were the main reason for that. He fought within himself to ensure he didn’t make any deadly mistakes and as a result Parker threw a million punches but hardly anything that wasn’t anticipated by Cojanu. It’s easy to keep your guard up when you aren’t throwing anything in return. Cojanu’s slim hopes were dependent on being able to frustrate Parker to the point that he made a mistake and Cojanu’s power could capitalise. Problem was he didn’t have any speed to go with that power, so he probably wouldn’t have hit him anyway.

But what did you expect? Cojanu set himself up in the most likely way to get him a miraculous victory. It was still a slim chance, but by slowing the fight down and annoying Parker he at least had a better chance than he would have if he’d tried to knock JP out in the opening rounds. And if he could take it to the last couple rounds then you never know what might happen when the fists start flying.

Again, it didn’t work. The smash and grab attempt was thwarted by a very comfortable Parker performance, using his own speed to get in and out with a few cheeky combinations, nothing flashy or risky but more than enough to set up a very safe win on the cards long before Cojanu ever loosened up enough to start scrapping. Instead we saw Cojanu docked a point in the fourth for pressing down on Parker’s head in a clinch. Instead we saw him prance around, playing mind games to complement the tactics, anything to get a rise outta Parker. A couple times Joe threatened to do something out of anger but he always snapped his head back into place in time. Cojanu did what he had to do and it still wasn’t really enough. Fair play for trying though.

We didn’t get a lot of time to get to know Razvan Cojanu, but dammit I wish we’d tried harder. That guy was great value. The first impression was those weird-ass eyebrows that he’s always contorting into strange shapes. Then the accent and the unique mix of Eastern European and Hispanic-influenced English that comes with being a Romanian boxer based in California. Nobody really expected him to last the distance in this bout but he was out there telling everyone that he’d surprise them. Eventually he got annoyed at the doormat status he was granted by the kiwi media – which is fair enough but then it’s also fair enough that they were gonna focus more on the local fighter than the 12-day replacement. It’s a natural reaction on both sides.

It’s also a frustration with Duco’s encompassing grasp on these things. The Parker vs Ruiz fight drew 70,000 pay per view purchases in New Zealand while the Cojanu fight… only 14,000. This was a heavyweight title defence and for some reason it was made more about the absence of an opponent than it was about the New Zealander out to retain something no NZer has ever won even once before. Duco set the PPV price at fifty bucks. Then they left Kevin Barry to talk up Cojanu’s strength while they bitched about illegal streamers (and apparently, based on recent reports, dealt with some growing distractions within their organisation). Act a little less indignant about it and people mighta been more hyped.

At the weigh in before the fight, former sports reporter and now Duco PR fella Craig Stanaway asked Razvan Cojanu a few questions before a media crowd. It was a rare exploitation of Cojanu’s flair and personality but it was also pretty weird. At one point Cojanu says he’d do anything to win. Stanaway then calls him on it like: “…anything…?”

After the fight, in which Cojanu provided those very surprises he promised by taking it all twelve rounds, he unleashed an absolutely brilliant and hilarious tirade at his media scrum. They asked him about the money he made from this and he rightly shrugged it off, it wasn’t about money it was about a title shot. This was a rare opportunity for him, you win the belt and the money will follow.

“Everyone was thinking ‘oh you come here for money and after one round you gonna lay down’. No, I come here to take out Joseph Parker. He run like a chicken but this is the life!”

Then Stanaway, next to him, starts laughing and Cojanu starts teasing him for not sticking up for his boy. Stanaway says they oughta bring him back as an analyst (erm, yes please) but Raz says nah, bring me back to fight, amigo. Then he tells Stanaway, lightheartedly, to stop “BS-ing around” in reference to the same line of questioning the night before.

“I was saying I was gonna do anything to win this fight and he backed me up right away: ‘what mean anything?’ – I don’t have a gun in the boxing shoes, and was gonna shoot Joseph… what the fuck should I do man!? Fight, man. Fight! He try to play smart. He thinks Romanians are not smart enough.”

Then the Raz Man winks casually at the reporters, who by this stage are eating out of his hand. Ten minutes earlier he’d begun the chat by asking his own name. Who am I? Who am I? The first question he’d gotten was about his opinion on Parker vs Joshua and he snapped back. Ask Razvan about Razvan, don’t ask Razvan about Joshua or Parker. It was the same approach he’d seen his entire time in NZ. Everything he did was seen in relation to Joseph Parker while this is a dude trying to make a name for himself in the heavyweight scene. He’s not exactly Deontay Wilder out there but he’s still a ranked WBO fighter.

Although he also does have to accept some of the circumstances when he comes in at short notice to fight an established champ. Raz arrived in Aotearoa with an almost completely irrelevant boxing resume. Like, he had zero wins against anyone worth a damn in 2017 in the heavyweight division. His last fight was against a rather rotund local bloke on a card in China, the initial opponent pulling out injured late on (so Cojanu’s been on both sides of that his last two bouts). We tried here on TNC to put his career into some perspective but, y’know, the only video of him on youtube is him getting decked by Donovan Dennis at the Boxcino tournament two years back. Hardly glamorous stuff.

(Read in a thick Romanian accent): “You remember after that loss of mine with Dennis Donovan [sic], with the southpaw right? Nobody asked me why did I lose like that. You know I was cut to the right eye? I didn’t get one round sparring with a southpaw. I go in the ring and after first round, in the second round, I did a mistake. After that fight, nobody came to me: Razvan, how did you lose by KO with that guy? Everyone was laughing. I had five stitches, I couldn’t spar. I had only one month between the fights. I didn’t was ready.”

The other loss on his record was against Alvaro Morales by mixed decision in his first professional fight. Two years later he beat Morales, also by mixed decision, in a rematch. It was actually more like six weeks between Boxcino fights but if he wasn’t sparring then it hardly matters. There was no prep for that. Now he has a third loss but it was a title fight and he still went the distance.

Cojanu was saying it all along, Kevin Barry was saying it all along… maybe this guy is better than he was given credit for. Maybe that’s a lesson worth learning from this. On the positive, a great attitude and a dose of nobody-respects-me-gotta-keep-proving-myself can go a long way towards a long career. Fingers crossed we hear from him again someday because after this, seeing him against another fringe heavyweight contender would be mighty interesting. Even if only for the quotes.

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