By Scott Gilfoid: Tony Bellew has been talking a lot lately about how WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker’s people have contacted him to discuss a fight between them, but it appears that he’ll have to defend against Hughie Fury instead. Fury, 22, is still Parker’s mandatory challenger despite having suffered a back injury that caused him to pull out of last Saturday’s fight with Parker.
The World Boxing Organization has ordered Parker to defend against the unbeaten Hughie (20-0, 10 KOs) within 120 days, which means there’s no possibility of a fight between him and Bellew. That’s not good news for Parker, because he would have gotten nice cash in an easy title defense against Bellew if that fight could be made. It’s arguably a much better fight for Parker than him having to chase Hughie around the ring for 12 rounds. I don’t know if Parker-Fury draws flies in the UK. Hughie isn’t a big name over there.
“Fury is the mandatory,” WBO Asia Pacific vice president Leon Panoncillo told www.stuff.co.nz “The injury has been proven by documentation submitted to the WBO. We don’t know the severity of it or if it’s a hoax. But he does have proof from a doctor that he was injured and that’s legitimate for us to declare him as still the mandatory. Parker has to defend the title against Fury within 120 days.”
Now the magic question is can Parker’s promoters work out a deal to have him face Bellew next instead of Hughie? That would be the ideal thing. If Parker can get the Bellew fight next, he’d get a nice payday in before he has to take care of the 6’6” Hughie, which is still a winnable fight for him if he makes some minor adjustments to his game.
Parker looked something awful last Saturday night in beating fringe contender Razvan Cojanu by an unimpressive 12 round unanimous decision at the Sparks Arena in Auckland, New Zealand. Parker looked like he lacked the explosiveness to his game. A good heavyweight would have likely knocked Cojanu out in the early rounds of that fight, but Parker wasn’t able to put his punches together to get the knockout. Moreover, he didn’t have enough power on the mostly single shots that he was landing in order to get him out. Cojanu was as big as a house at 6’8″, 274. You can’t blame Parker entirely for not being able to knock the guy out, I think Parker can knockout Bellew, who looks like an overweight light heavyweight. I couldn’t see Bellew taking the head shots that Cojanu did last Saturday.
“I spoke to people from New Zealand just last night after Joseph Parker had won,” said Bellew to Sky Sports News HQ. “Everyone is saying ‘Tony Bellew will you fight Joseph Parker and become heavyweight champion of the world?’ The answer to that question is yes I would, but the salt and pepper has to be on my side of the table..”
Bellew, 34, wants to be the bigger cut of the cash for a fight against Parker. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Even if the WBO sanctioning body organization does allow Parker to briefly steer around the Hughie fight in order to make another voluntary defense, I don’t see Parker’s promoters letting an upstart like Bellew get the bigger slice of the revenue for the fight. I know I wouldn’t let him. Bellew should be happy just getting a title shot against a champion like Parker. It’s not as if Bellew did anything special to earn the fight. All Bellew did was beat an injured David Haye last March by an 11th round TKO. Bellew was getting beaten before Haye hurt his right Achilles in round 6. I’m surprised the fight wasn’t stopped on the spot, because I’ve never heard of a fight being allowed to continue after someone has torn their Achilles. That’s a really bad injury. The thing of it is, Haye fought Bellew almost to a standstill even after tearing up his Achilles.
Bellew is probably going to have to fight someone else instead of Parker. That’s not good for Bellew, because he’s not a real heavyweight, and if he gets put in with even domestic guys like David Allen or Ian Lewison, he’d probably lose to either of them. I think Bellew wants a fight against Anthony Joshua, but their mutual promoter Eddie Hearn can’t make that fight next because it would be such a face. Besides that, Joshua has a rematch he has to get out of the way against Wladimir Klitschko followed by a title defense against Kubrat Pulev. Whether Bellew likes it or not, he’s going to need to stay busy fighting other heavyweights, and that’s going to be a MAJOR problem for him, because he doesn’t have the size, power or the talent to beat anyone in my opinion. It’s too bad. Parker would have been a nice payday for Bellew if not for the WBO saying that he needs to fight his mandatory challenger Hughie.
Dillian Whyte really wants a piece of Parker after seeing his fight against Cojanu. However, the 25-year-old Parker (23-0, 18 KOs) isn’t even considering a fight against him. There’s no money in a fight of that type. If Parker is going to take another voluntary defense, he obviously is going to want to make sure that’s one that will bring him some money and not be a potentially difficult one. There’s no real upside in Parker fighting the 29-year-old Whyte next.
In addition to the money not being that great for that fight, Whyte is coming off of a controversial 12 round split decision win over former heavyweight world title challenger Dereck Chisora on December 10 last year, a fight in which a lot of the boxing public thought Whyte lost. I saw the fight, and I DEFINITELY had Chisora winning. With the bad stink following Whyte after that questionable win, it does Parker no good to fight him right now, because he’s not someone that would be coming into the fight on a high note. Parker would be getting Chisora’s leftovers if he fought Whyte. Parker might as well choose Chisora rather than Whyte if he wants to take another voluntary defense if he can’t get Bellew.
Bellew is recovering from a broken hand from his win over Haye last March. Bellew says he’s now able to use the hand finally. It’s good news, but it still doesn’t mean anything. If the WBO is going to require that he defend against Hughie next, then Bellew won’t be getting a title shot anyway. Bellew will need to do something else. He can sit and wait for Joshua to fight him in 2018 or he can get busy with his career and try and fight someone that’s not injured badly. I cannot see Bellew moving back down to cruiserweight to challenge the new World Boxing Council champion Mairis Briedis next. Bellew is the WBC Emeritus champion, which means he can get a title shot against Briedis any time he wants one without having to work his way into a title fight like other fighters do.
The reason why Bellew likely won’t consider that option is because Briedis is a very, very good fighter ad would likely make easy work of Bellew. You can argue that’s the reason why Bellew wouldn’t fight Briedis when he was his No.1 challenger at cruiserweight. Instead of fighting Briedis, Bellew took the easy path by picking from the bottom of the WBC’s top 15 to select BJ Flores, who was ranked No.14. Why did Bellew pick from the bottom of the WBC’s rankings instead of from the top? You tell me. I think Bellew didn’t want any part of Briedis. The WBC should have ordered Bellew to fight Briedis, but instead they had him face Marco Huck. Briedis easily beat Huck. After Bellew beat Flores, he then fought and beat the injured Haye.