By Scott Gilfoid: IBF/WBA heavyweight Anthony Joshua (20-0, 20 KOs) has already made it clear that he’s not going to shake the hands of WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker (24-0, 18 KOs) after their March 31 unification fight.
Joshua says he won’t shake the hands of Parker, 26, after he beats him. Beating the hard-hitting steal-chinned Parker isn’t a forgone conclusion for Joshua. This isn’t one of Joshua’s typical punching bag opponents dragged into the ring for him to pound. Parker can actually take a punch and give it back with the same authority. He also doesn’t fight with his back against the ropes like many of Joshua’s past opponents have done against him. Parker likes to stay on the move when he’s not slugging in the center of the ring against his opponents.
He’ll be respectful after I whoop him. He might try to shake my hand. I won’t shake his hand though,” said Joshua to skysports.com.
oh my, Joshua does sound like he’s starting to boil over, doesn’t he?. This is what I was afraid of. It sounds like Parker and his promoter David Higgins have already gotten into Joshua’s head. The battle of the minds has already been lost by Joshua and it’s only January 14. Joshua might want to get one of those sports psych experts that can coach him on how to shutout his mind chatter so he’s no unnerved so easily.
Joshua needs to not get riled up for the Parker fight, because this isn’t one of his usual punching bag opponents. Parker can actually fight. If Joshua overexerts himself inside the ring on the night, he may be fighting on fumes. Believe me; Parker is not the type of fighter that you want to be fighting if you’re in a state of exhaustion like Joshua was against Carlos Takam and Wladimir Klitschko.
I’m sure that Parker won’t be too broken up about not being able to get a handshake from Joshua after the fight, especially if he knocks him out. It’s just going to make Joshua look like a poor sport if he doesn’t shake his hand. That would look bad in the eyes of his boxing fans if he refuses to shake Parker’s hand if he loses the fight. However, now that Joshua has given Parker the word about not being interested in shaking his hand, you can bet that he won’t even attempt to shake his hand after the fight.
I wouldn’t be so sure if I was Joshua about him believing that he’s going to be able to beat the New Zealander Parker. This is a tough nut that he may not be able to crack. Joshua has shown signs that he’s starting to come unraveled at the seams in his last 2 fights. Whether that’s from him aging or signs that he’s losing his ability to take a punch aren’t clear. It could be that Joshua’s love of weight lifting is starting to erode his boxing skills. When you have a hobby that makes changes to your physique, it can hurt your boxing game. If Joshua’s hobby was playing chess, it wouldn’t hurt his boxing career as long as he made sure he trained enough to keep his skills sharp. But in the case of Joshua’s weight lifting, it’s really hurt his stamina and hand speed. He’s slower now, and he runs out of gas quickly in his fights. If Joshua’s trainer doesn’t get him to back off from his weight lifting, he might get knocked out by Parker on March 31.
“I haven’t seen them all, but I’ve heard some of them,” said Joshua about Parker making negative comments about him. ”He’s not a respectable type of person, he can’t control himself.”
Joshua wants Parker to play it cool with him by being nice and polite like his past opponents. Parker isn’t going for that. He doesn’t want to be a nice guy to Joshua, who he doesn’t appear to like very much. The two fighters had a tough negotiation process with Parker getting the smaller purse of 30 to 35 percent. Parker was hoping to get 40 percent of the loot, but his management wasn’t able to get Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn to agree to give him the split he wanted. As such, there’s bad blood on Parker’s side, and he’s not about to forget about it in the lead up to the fight. Joshua got what he wanted out of the negotiations, so he’s obviously happy going into the fight. I don’t know why Joshua would expect Parker to feel the same way when he didn’t get what he wanted out of the deal. It seems like Joshua is having a hard time empathizing with Parker for some reason. Being the A-side in the negotiations for all 20 of his fights as a pro may be preventing Joshua from being able to see things from his opponents’ perspective.
Joshua believes he can hurt Parker with body shots. The reason why thinks that is because he was able to drop his last opponent Carlos Takam with a body shot in the 4th round in their fight on October 28 in Cardiff, Wales. What Joshua doesn’t say is Takam was cut badly in the same round from an uppercut that grazed his right eye. Takam was totally concerned with his cut eye and not even defending himself or throwing anything back to keep Joshua off of him.
“Jab to the stomach, right hand to the stomach. If someone has got a strong head, you hit them to the body. It’s quite simple so if Parker’s got a granite chin, I’ll weaken his body down,” said Joshua.
It’s unlikely that Joshua will be able to land his body shots against Parker, who tends to fight at medium to long range in his fights. Body shots only work if your opponent is stationary and allowing you to get in close enough to throw them. If Joshua tries to throw a body shot from the outside, he’ll get countered by one of Parker’s right hands. I’d like to think that Joshua won’t make the mistake of throwing body shots from long distance, but you never know. Given that Joshua doesn’t throw power shots from the outside, I would have to conclude that it’s an empty threat on his part that he’ll be throwing body shots in the fight. You can expect Joshua to continue to give false information to the boxing media in how he’ll be fighting Parker. It’ll be just like what we heard from Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn about how Joshua was going to be coming into his fight with Takam lighter than usual. Hearn had people thinking Joshua would be weighing in the 230s for the Takam fight. Joshua ended up weighing in at a career high of 254 pounds for the fight, and was sluggish and slow all night long. It should be interesting to hear more of Joshua’s inside information in how he plans on fighting Parker. Hopefully, Joshua doesn’t go overboard by saying silly stuff like he’s going to throw 100 punches per round against Parker. It’ll be pure make believe at that point. Joshua saying he’s going to throw body shots is bad enough, but Joshua predicting a high punch output would be dream stuff. Joshua gasses out when he throws even 40 punches per round sometimes. He has major stamina problems.
There’s a mini unofficial heavyweight tournament going on in the division now with Joshua facing Parker, and WBC heavyweight champion Deontay ‘Bronze Bomber’ Wilder (39-0, 38 KOs) defending against Luis ‘King Kong’ Ortiz (28-0, 24 KOs) on March 3 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The winner of those fights has to meet each other in 2018 if possible. Joshua-Parker and Wilder-Ortiz are semifinals type fights. This should be interesting if the winners of those 2 fights wind up facing each other.