By Scott Gilfoid: After seeing Joseph Parker (19-0, 16 KOs) to struggle to defeat 35-year-old Carlo Takam (33-3-1, 25 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision in their IBF heavyweight eliminator bout last Saturday night, I don’t see Parker as being championship material.
Parker just doesn’t have the ingredients in his game to defeat IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua when the two of them meet up. This is going to be too easy for Joshua because Parker just doesn’t look like he’s ready to fight for a world title.
At 24, his stamina looked almost as bad as Takam’s, and I can’t see him lasting more than a few rounds against Joshua if he pushes the pace against him.
Parker beat Takam by the scores 116-112, 116-112 and 115-113, but he looked horrid.
Parker is the IBF mandatory for Joshua after his win over Takam, and I don’t see Parker as having enough talent to defeat Joshua. I mean, Joshua is terribly flawed as a champion, but I see Parker as far, far worse than him. His arms are too short for a fighter as tall as him, he’s too slow, too easy to hit, and too weak. His punching power is overrated. Takam appeared to be the harder puncher of the two last Saturday night in their fight at the Vodafone Events Centre in Manukau City in New Zealand.
Parker did enough to get the win, but only because Takam didn’t have the engine to fight hard for three minutes of every round. Takam looked only capable of fighting hard for one round every four rounds. He would fight hard for a round and then take four rounds off to get his wind back. It was pretty sad because Takam used to be able to fight hard for an entire fight, but he sure didn’t do that last Saturday night.
Dillian Whyte wasn’t impressed with what he saw from Parker.
“I think his power is overrated. I think he’s fought a lot of sandbags. Tonight he fought someone with a bit of experience and intelligence and he couldn’t stop him,” Whyte said to skysports.com. “I see things in Parker’s game that mean I could knock him out.”
I agree with Whyte. I think Parker doesn’t hit as hard as people think he does, and I see him getting knocked out when he steps it up. The guy needs major improvements before he challenges for a world title and he’s not going to get those improvements by the time he faces Joshua in 2016 or 2017. If I’m Parker’s management, I would give up the mandatory sport so that he can work on improvements in his game because he’s going to get knocked out quickly when he faces him in my view.