Joseph Parker stops Jason Bergman in 8th

By Boxing News - 01/23/2016 - Comments

parkerBy Jim Dower: #3 WBO, #7 WBC, #10 IBF, #11 WBA heavyweight contender Joseph Parker (18-0, 16 KOs) remained unbeaten in stopping a flabby looking 31-year-old Jason Bergman (25-12-2, 16 KOs) in the 8th round of a scheduled 12 round bout to retain his WBO African/Oriental heavyweight titles last Friday night at the Faleata Sports Complex, in Apia, Samoa.

The 24-year-old Parker hurt Bergman with a left to the body followed by right to the head that backed him up to the ropes. Parker than landed a big left-right combination that dropped Bergman to the canvas. A hurt looking Bergman got back to his feet, but referee John Conway chose to stop the fight after looking at how hurt Bergman was.

The official time of the stoppage was at 1:02 of round eight. Parker knocked Bergman down three times in the fight in dropping him once in the 2nd, 7th and 8th rounds. If there’s anything to criticize from Parker’s performance, it’s how easy it was for Bergman to hit him.

Bergman was able to land shots all throughout the fight, and these were punches that Parker should have been able to block or get out of the way of. Bergman was landing clean punches that frequently caused Parker to freeze up after getting hit. If this was bigger and stronger heavyweight with more punching power and skill, Parker would have been in trouble last night.

Parker is too easy to hit right now for him to be put in with better heavyweight in my opinion. Parker’s management needs to keep him in the slow lane until he fixes his defensive issues before they consider moving him up a level against better heavyweights.

It might be a good idea to hire a defensive coach that can work with Parker to teach him how to get out of the way of shots, because he can’t be getting hit like he was last night if he wants to be able to succeed at the highest levels of the sport.

The other negative in Parker’s performance was his inability to put his shots together in a sustained way to get Bergman out of there. A good heavyweight like Luis Ortiz, Tyson Fury or Anthony Joshua would have been all over Bergman in the first three rounds and would have kept pumping shots into him until he dropped.

It probably would have taken one sustained flurry to get Bergman out of there in a round or two. But it wasn’t a good sign that it took Parker eight rounds before he was finally able to get a knockout in this fight. It suggests that Parker has a long way to go both on offense and defensive before he’s ready to mix it up with the best in the heavyweight division.

Parker has the punching power that would enable him to go far in the division with the right coaching. The shots that Parker was bouncing off Bergman’s chin all night long would have stopped better heavyweights in the division. However, this is 2016, and Parker needs more work if he wants to compete with the best. If this was the weak era in the heavyweight division from 2004 to 2012, Parker would likely have enough talent to hold down one of the heavyweight titles. But in the new era in the heavyweight division, you’ve got to have skills along with major power to succeed. Parker is still lacking in the skills department unfortunately.



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