Joshua vs Parker: thoughts and takeaways.

Pretty lacklustre fare, really. Not much action compounded by poor adjudicating by the referee  who interjected either incorrectly or prematurely (holding) multiple times, and at one point  failed to notice Joshua's lace had come unraveled which resulted in a bizarre moment when Joshua literally called his own time out.

Scoring was very, very generous  and in favor of Joshua with no judge giving him anything less than 8 rounds. Frankly, this fight was much more competitive than those scores indicate. Parker did land clean on Joshua multiple times and his body work was superior. He did have Joshua's range and was able to stifle Josha's power right very effectively but at the cost of his own offensive scoring.This is probably why the fight was a textbook snoozer and fans who paid for it will no doubt have a bad case of buyer's remorse. Nobody likes to pay a premium to see a hugging festival and while I've seen worse exhibitions of this, this one was pretty bad.

The decision was correct ultimately, with Joshua definitely landing the cleaner and more effective strikes.


Going forward:

Anthony Joshua called out Deontay Wilder post fight. Based on tonight's performance,I think that Joshua will get KTFO in that bout within five rounds, and I believe he's only paying lip service to the fight and will probably try and duck the bronze bomber for some time.

Anthony Joshua is, as I've always believed, a very meat n' potatoes orthodox fighter who I suspect will be bamboozled by Wilder's speed, angles and range. Moreover, I question his chin; he was visibly rocked by short punches tonight by a guy who is certainly not known for powerpunching and does not have a large variety of classy or technical punches.

To put this into perspective, Wilder just knocked out Ortiz who is a decidedly better boxer everywhere than Parker, and who would no doubt dispatch of him pretty handily. Ortiz had not been stopped prior and is very, very good  cuban-style shell pocket boxer. It's just very hard to land a finisher on him. I now believe that Ortiz would decision Joshua very comfortably or possibly KO him in the later rounds, especially given how uncomfortable he looked in middle space.

All in all, this fight did nothing to elevate Joshua in terms of accolades, and is probably a case of a fighter losing by winning. I fully expect Wilder to be nothing but pure mockery in the media after this, and for once, there will be reason to be given pause by it.This fight was really meant to be a guppy feed with Joshua winning by KO, but Parker just showed the world that Joshua simply is not the big fish that his promoter would have us believe he is.

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* Edited at 03.31.2018, 7:10 PM ET *

@HJ HW is ijn a major slump right now. I don't believe any of these guys would have had anything for the 90's generation of HW's.

Very interested to see how Daniel Dubois develops. Fury and Joshua have both heaped praise on him and he's finished six straight by KO in the first. He dropped Joshua on his arse in sparring too apparently and he's only 19, or maybe twenty years old as of now.

Yeah, that's true.Cornish would be a good fight for him at this point (I'd back him to win that, Cornish to me is basically the same fighter as DL Jones except he's got better footwork and a double pump jab) but I don't want  Joyce vs Dubois for a while. They're both young guys and big punchers, someone would be getting sparked badly and that's not a great thing to do to young talent.Well, Joyce isn't that young but he's only had 3 or 4 fights if memory serves. I suppose since he's 32 he needs to put his foot down though.

Price would be good, but really he should have hung em' up after that ugly KO by Povetkin and I think that Dubois would only have to touch him to put him out. God knows what would happen to price if he ate the kitchen sink. However, it would still be a classic Boxer vs a puncher bout, and most of the time the boxer will prevail in those. So maybe experience would prevail.

From where I stand, Dubois could benefit from drilling some step-out/off the back foot counters, and somebody should tell him what a level change is. As it stand right now he just walks forward and relies on his power, and volume to the body, to get it done. Which is fine if you're fighting guys that look like they train by fighting waiters over the the price of bill after a dozen pints and a carvery dinner at the local, but as he moves into better competition won't be enough.

Not too much on the Horizon in the world of Boxing that springs me really. I'll tune in for Horn vs Bud but that's about as close to sanctioned murder as it gets really.
 

* Edited at 03.31.2018, 11:47 PM ET *

@rappin it was pretty much a fizzer. Lots of tie-ups and resetting, neither man was really able to string together combos, and there were no 'oh ****'! moments. Both guys spent more time hiding in guard than throwing anything, however joshua did flick the jab a lot.

Parker performed much better than I thought he would, especially in the middle rounds--but he is what he is, and that's probably as good as he'll ever look. Joshua looked lacklustre and was never able to find an entry through Parker's guard. He landed some nice crisp rights and definitely scored the most points, but yeah...his performance did not blow me away by any means.

Well, It's not that I think Wilder is the second coming of Ali or anything, but I think he starches Joshua pretty easily. Joshua looks good because he's coming up in a period virtually devoid of high-end heavyweight talent, but the reality is, there's nothing remarkable about him at all as a boxer.

He also gets rocked very easily. It's like people have forgotten that Klitchsko nearly KO'ed him, and he's an old man. All wilder needs is one, and I am convinced he'll land it.

There will be a rematch, and it will probably go the same way.