Hughie Fury in negotiations with Joseph Parker

By Boxing News - 12/31/2016 - Comments

Image: Hughie Fury in negotiations with Joseph Parker

By Scott Gilfoid: Hughie Fury says he’s in negotiations with WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker for a fight that will be taking place on April 8. Parker has two other candidates for his next fight in David Price and Jarrell Miller if the negotiations with the 22-year-old Hughie don’t pan out.

It’s not surprising though that Hughie is the one that is in the lead spot to get the fight with the 24-year-old Parker. Hughie is the cousin of former heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, and it would be helpful to Parker if he were to whip Hughie (20-0, 10 KOs). That would help increase the chances of Tyson wanting to come and avenge Hughie’s loss.

The thing is, Tyson can’t make a career out of coming in and avenging Hughie’s losses, because he’s very likely going to accumulate a lot of them once he starts facing top level fighters instead of the journeyman and 3rd tier guys that he built his inflated 20-0 record on.

“We’re in negotiations with it at the minute,” Fury said to skysports.com. “I am mandatory, so it will be happening either way. I’m in the No 1 position, I’m mandatory, and I will be fighting for that title.”

I never thought for a second that Parker (22-0, 18 KOs) would fight Jarrell Miller or David Price. Those guys hit too hard. Even if they missed with 99% of their shots against him, if they landed just one good punch to the head of body, it might be goodnight for the World Boxing Organization champion. At least by picking the feather-fisted Hughie as the guy to defend against, Parker doesn’t need to worry about getting knocked out.

The only things Parker needs to be concerned about is being able to chase down Hughie, and avoid getting head-butted when he looks to hold. Hughie was totally exhausted and taking punishment in his last fight against Kassi in the 7th round last April. The next thing you know, Hughie accidentally rams heads with Kassi, opening up a big cut over the right eye of Hughie. The fight was then stopped.

It was incredibly good luck for Hughie that his face collided with Kassi’s head at that point in the fight, because Kassi had turned the tables and was starting to get to the 6’6” Fury. Honestly, I think Hughie would have been knocked out by the 9th, because he had nothing left in the tank. He was fighting on fumes and getting walloped by Kassi. The boxing fans were no longer cheering Hughie because there was nothing to cheer about. Things were dire until that beautiful fight-saving head-butt for Hughie. Hopefully, this doesn’t become a habit for Hughie. In other words, I wouldn’t want to see Hughie building up leads in his future fights and then having him suffer cuts from head-butts that cause the fights to go to the scorecards over and over again. The head-butt probably saved Hughie against Kassi, but it would be sad if this becomes the norm for Hughie in his future fights. If Hughie doesn’t have the stamina to fight longer than 6 rounds against decent quality fighters, then he doesn’t have any business fighting for world titles against the likes of Joseph Parker, does he? I’m just saying.

In Hughie’s last four fights, he’s beaten Fred Kassi, Dominick Guinn, Larry Olunamiwo and Emilio Ezequiel. Hughie’s best win of his career was a 10 round unanimous decision victory over fringe contender Andriy Rudenko in February 2015. Hughie used his hit and run fighting style to get the better of the 6-foot Rudenko.

It was a really hard fight to watch for me, because Hughie was doing nothing but hitting and running. When he wasn’t doing either of those things, he was tying Rudenko up on the inside to keep him from throwing punches. In other words, it was pure spoiling tactics from the young Hughie. Mike Tyson, it was not.

“I’m not in this sport just to win a world title and that’s it, throw it up in the air and go wild,” said Hughie. “I’m here to win it and prove that I am a worthy champion. Once I win that title, I’m coming for them all.”

Oh boy, I think someone needs to wake Hughie up from his reverie, because I think he’s having delusions of grandeur. I mean, Hughie hasn’t even gotten the fight signed with Parker, and he’s already talking about wanting to win all the heavyweight titles in the division against champions Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder. I’m not too high on the 6’4” Parker as a fighter, but I think he’s got the boxing ability and the pedigree to do the job on Hughie.

Gosh, if Parker can’t beat Hughie, then he might need to think about packing it in, because this is a fight that Parker should be able to win with his eyes closed. He’s a better talent than Hughie. Parker just needs to fight better than he did in his last fight against Andy Ruiz Jr. on December 10. Parker gave Ruiz too much respect by not going after him in the first six rounds.

I think Parker doesn’t seem to know how good he is, and he gives guys too much respect. If Parker had just jumped on Ruiz Jr. in the first four rounds of their fight, he might have knocked him out. At the very least, Parker would have worn him down. It was the same thing for Parker in his fight against Carlos Takam. He gave Takam too much respect by choosing to focus on his boxing rather than going after him early with his punching power. Parker could have blasted Takam out in the same way that Alexander Povetkin did if he’d slugged with him.

Hughie is going to have a lot of problems with Parker, because he’s very mobile for a big many. This means that if Hughie chooses to run around the ring, Parker is going to have the wheels to catch up to him. This is good news for boxing fans, because they won’t be stuck having to watch Hughie run all night long like he did against Rudenko and Kassi. Parker will catch Hughie and force him to fight whether he wants to or not.