By Tim Fletcher: 6’5” American Charles Martin (23-0-1, 21 KOs) captured the IBF heavyweight title last Saturday night with a 3rd round injury stoppage win over #1 IBF Vyachaslav Glazkov (21-1-1, 13 KOs) on the Deontay Wilder vs. Artur Szpilka card at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The fight was stopped at 1:50 of the third round after the 31-year-old Glazkov suffered a right knee injury that prevented him from continuing the fight.
Before the bout was halted, Martin had done little to impress. #7 IBF contender Joseph Parker (17-0, 15 KOs) did not see much from Martin to be impressed about.
The fight was stopped before either guy had done much. Martin threw a few arm punches in the third round, and the next thing you know it referee Alberto Earl Brown is stopping the fight.
“Charles Martin, we watched him, and he won the IBF championship of the world, but we don’t think he’s anything special,” said Parker to skysports.com. “We’re heading in the right direction after seeing what they did in the ring.”
The 6’4” Parker has a fight this Saturday night on January 23 against Jason Bergman (25-11-2, 16 KOs) at the Faleata Sports Complex in Apia, Somoa. If Parker can keep winning, then he could get a title shot against Charles Martin in the future. However, the odds of Martin still holding the IBF title by the time Parker becomes the IBF mandatory challenger is extremely remote.
Martin does not look like someone who is good enough to hold onto a title for more than one or two defenses at best, and even under those conditions it would likely require him being matched against one of the bottom ranked contenders in the division.
“Having these characters in the division is definitely going to give us a lot more attention,” Parker said. “I believe it’s going to bring more excitement to the heavyweight division. We have Wilder who talks a lot and [Tyson] Fury who talks a lot.”
Parker just turned 24, and he needs to a lot of improvement if he wants to amount to something in the division. Parker has good punching power, but his defensive skills are lacking at this time. He gets hit way too much, and he has problems fighting on the outside. Most of the work Parker does is at medium to close range. It’s working thus far against the limited opposition that he’s been facing, but when he gets inside the ring against a taller fighter like Tyson Fury or Deontay Wilder, he could find himself eating jabs and single power shots from the outside all night long.
In Parker’s last five fights, he’s beaten Daniel Martz, Kali Meehan, Bowie Tupou, Yakup Saglam, and Jason Pettaway. Parker has probably gotten greater experience sparring than he has in his fights as a pro, because he’s not been fighting good opposition as of yet to really get much from the fights.
Parker needs more experience before he takes on someone like Martin, because the big American heavyweight knows how to fight on the outside and he might pick Parker apart with his single shots. It would be a real problem if Parker couldn’t score a knockout in this fight.
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