By Jeff Aranow: Dean Lonergan, the promoter for unbeaten #6 IBF Joseph Parker (18-0, 16 KOs), is expecting unbeaten #4 IBF Anthony Joshua (15-0, 15 KOs) to defeat IBF heavyweight champion Charles Martin (23-0-1, 21 KOs) on April 9 in their fight on Sky Box Office from the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Parker, 24, could soon be facing Joshua for the IBF title if Parker beats #5 IBF Carlos Takam in their IBF eliminator bout in May. There isn’t a set date for the Takam vs. Parker fight, but it’s definitely going to take place in May.
The winner of the contest will be the IBF mandatory challenger and will face the winner of the Martin-Joshua fight at some point in the future.
“I personally think Anthony Joshua is going to win it and win it well,” said Lonergan to skysports.com. “The big question about Charles Martin is: ‘can he really fight?’ We’re going to find out in April, because we all know Anthony Joshua can fight and it’s going to be fascinating to see how Charles Martin, steps up even though he is the champion.”
There’s no way of knowing how well the 6’5” Martin will do against Joshua because he hasn’t had the experience at the pro level to show the boxing world how he’ll do. The only fight where Martin fought a decent level opponent was in his fight against Vyacheslav Glazkov last January. That fight was stopped in the 3rd round after Glazkov slipped on the canvas and blew out a knee. It might have been a fight that the southpaw Martin could have won anyway though, because he had a big size and power advantage over the smaller 6’2” Glazkov.
It’ll be a different story for Martin on April 9 because he’ll be fighting the taller, heavier and stronger Joshua in front of his own fans at the O2 Arena. If Martin isn’t for real, he’s going to get found out quick, possibly as early as the 1st round.
Martin will need to some power and a steady flow of punches to keep Joshua off of him and to earn his respect.
Lonergan says they were looking to setup a fight between Parker and the 44-year-old Shannon Briggs, but they’ve had no success in getting a hold of Briggs to make the fight happen. It looks like Briggs is only focused right now in getting fights against British heavyweights David Haye, Joshua and Tyson Fury.
Briggs traveled to the UK this week and has been in London looking for those three heavyweight, in particular Haye. Briggs wants to meet with him because Haye said recently that he’s one of the guys that he’s thinking of fighting on May 21 at the O2. Haye gave Briggs some hope.
Haye probably should have kept quiet about being interested in Briggs unless he was interested. The good news is that Briggs can’t stay in the UK that long to try and track Haye down because it’s probably costing him a lot of money to stay there. Briggs will eventually need to leave to go back to the U.S and will likely wind up empty-handed.
“Shannon Briggs has been running from Joseph Parker for the last year-and-a-half,” Lonergan said. “I’ve been trying to track Shannon down and he just will not talk to me, because he knows that Joseph Parker would knock him out inside five rounds. He will just not talk, because he doesn’t want to take the fight.”
Parker has beaten the following heavyweights in his last five fights: Jason Bergman, Daniel Martz, Kali Meehan, Bowie Tupou, and Yakup Saglam. It’s going to be a tough test for Parker to try and defeat the 35-year-old Carlos Takam next May. Takam is a solid heavyweight with good punching power, excellent size, and a high work rate.
If Parker doesn’t fix the flaws in his game that he’s shown during his short career, he could wind up getting knocked out by Takam. It’s a big step up for Parker to fight someone as good as Takam, and it’s unclear whether he’s ready for that kind of a step up. It’s an even bigger step up for Parker to fight the winner of the Joshua vs. Martin fight. That might be a step too far for Parker at this point in his career.
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