Parker gives Joshua final offer of 65-35 cut

By Boxing News - 11/22/2017 - Comments

Image: Parker gives Joshua final offer of 65-35 cut

By Scott Gilfoid: Joseph Parker and his management have reportedly made a final 65-35 offer to IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua for a unification fight in the first half of 2018. It’s now up to Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn to see if they’re willing to accept the offer.

Parker isn’t going to accept less than 35 percent of the revenue for the Joshua fight. With all the PPV buys and ticket sales for a fight between the two champions, Parker could make quite bit of cash if he can get a 35 percent cut.

It’s now up to Eddie Hearn and Joshua if they’re willing to give Parker 35 percent of the dough for the fight. They need to consider what their options are. If Joshua was looking invincible like a young Mike Tyson, it would make sense to call Parker’s bluff and let him and his promoter know that he’s moving on. However, Joshua isn’t looking great now that he’s fighting better opposition, and it’s quite possible that he’ll lose soon, even if he’s facing just a regular contender.

Joshua’s first 18 wins of his career came against mediocre opposition. Now that Joshua has stepped it up slightly in his last 2 fights against an older 41-year-old Wladimir Klitschko and 36-year-old Carlos Takam, he’s looked very beatable. Joshua obviously isn’t the guy that won the Olympic gold medal in 2012, albeit by a series of controversial decisions. Joshua is more like a flawed heavyweight that is getting by solely on size and power rather than boxing skills.

It’s unclear what percentage of the money pot Hearn is willing to give to Parker. 25 percent would make Parker little more than a contender challenging Joshua for his world titles rather than a champion fighting in a unification fight.

WBO heavyweight champion Parker, 25, wants a fair deal for his unification fight with Joshua. He says the previous offer that his promoter Hearn offered was less half the money Charles Martin received for defending his IBF title against Joshua in 2015 in the UK.

“We want an open book on revenue share,” said Parker’s promoter David Higgins to skysports.com. “We have gone from 50 to 40 to 35 per cent. It’s our final bottom line decision. We feel anything less is disrespectful or a disgrace,” said Higgins.

Agreeing to take 35 percent is a move that you likely won’t see from WBC champion Deontay Wilder. He wants 50 percent. He’s not going to likely agree to give Joshua the lion’s share of the revenue while at the same time agreeing to give him home country advantage. Parker might be going about negotiating the fight with Joshua and Hearn in the wrong way. It might be better for Parker to have drawn a line in the sand at 40 percent and stuck with it.

So there it is. 35 percent of the cut is the final decision from Team Parker. Hearn and Joshua are now going to need to decide how badly they want to get their hands on the World Boxing Organization heavyweight belt. If Hearn feels that there’s enough value in adding another potential heavyweight world title strap to Joshua’s collection, then he’s going to need to agree to the 35 percent offer by Team Parker. Look at it this way. If Hearn walks away from the negotiations, his options for Joshua aren’t so great. He’ll likely need to match Joshua up with either Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller or Dillian Whyte in early 2018. Those are fights Joshua could lose. Joshua is starting to show conditioning problems that will likely get worse as he ages, and those are not the type of heavyweights that you want to gas out against. Miller eats up his opponents when they get tired.

Whyte is always dangerous due to his ability to throw hard body shots and apply constant pressure. Joshua isn’t as hard to hit as Whyte’s last opponent Robert Helenius, so this could be a hard fight for AJ. If Hearn decides not to give in to Parker’s request for 35 percent, he could be crying crocodile tears in early 2018 if Joshua gets beaten up by Miller or Whyte. By not giving Parker the money he’s asking for, Hearn could hurt Joshua’s finances negatively in a huge way by putting him in a fight against Miller that he could lose. Getting beaten by Miller would wreck the big money unification fight between Joshua and WBC champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder.