By Juan Flores: WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker says IBF/WBA champion Anthony Joshua has 2 choices for his next fight in early 2018. Joshua can either pay him 40 percent of the loot for the fight or he can take a voluntary defense.
Parker, 25, feels he deserves a 40 percent cut of the dough for the fight, as he’s a world champion and this is a unification fight. Parker says he wants “respect” when it comes to splitting up the cash from the fight.
”Anthony Joshua, so what’s happening? Fight a voluntary or pay me respectable 40% as fellow champion and unify? 👊🏼#NeverBeenDropped @EddieHearn @D_Higgins_Duco,” said Parker on his social media site.
If Parker is adamant about getting the 40 split of the treasure, then he needs to tell Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn that. Once they know that Parker will accept nothing less than the 40 percent split of the money, they can either give it to him or walk away.
In pirate terms, Parker wants to split the booty that the two of them are about to share in. Joshua and Parker are going sharing the cash for their fight, and the splitting of that money is going to be crucial to determine whether the match takes place or not. Parker doesn’t want to be paid his fair share. If the two heavyweights can’t divvy up the revenue in a somewhat fair manner, then there’s simply not going to be a fight. Parker isn’t going to take less than what he feels is a fair deal to fight Joshua in 2018.
“I feel it’s a little low, but they can improve on it,” said Parker to skysports.com about the initial offer made to him for the Joshua fight. ”I think I do deserve that respect. I worked hard to get here and I believe that if we want to unify then we should actually do a deal that everyone is happy with.”
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn could make things easy on himself if he just gave Parker the 40 percent slice of the pie that he was asking for. That would make things so easy.
Parker arguably made a mistake in asking for a 60-40 deal right off the bat. Hearn likely sees the 40 percent cut as a starting point for him to whittle down to a lower figure. Parker probably should have started off by asking for 50% of the money. Hearn would then look to whittle that down, and the two might have come up with the 40 percent that he feels is a fair deal for the fight. But to start at 40, and try to make that deal, it’s asking for trouble if that’s what Parker really wants.
Joshua is in a bad position right now. He almost has to negotiate the Parker fight. If he doesn’t put a deal together for a fight with Parker, then he’ll be stuck facing the likes of Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller or Dillian Whyte. Those aren’t easy fights, especially Miller. Joshua could gas out and get stopped by Miller if the American comes in at around 298 pounds, which is his best weight for him.
If Miller plans himself on the inside and forces Joshua to expend a lot of energy by trying to match his high work rate, we could see him gas out like he did against Whyte and Wladimir Klitschko. You don’t want to gas out against Jarrell Miller, because he’ll work you over if he’s at the right weight.
Miller came in too low for his last fight against Mariusz Wach in weighing in at 283 lbs. He wasn’t effective at that weight, and had the look of someone that was drained.
“Voluntary is 20 per cent is it? Mandatory is 30 per cent? So I think unification, it’s fair to make it 40 for a unification. It comes down to negotiating and seeing where everybody is at,” said Parker.
Parker brings up a good point. If a mandatory challenger is entitled to a 30% cut of the revenue, then champion should obviously receive more than that for a unification fight. It doesn’t make sense for another champion to receive less or the same amount as a mandatory challenger.
If Joshua wants to hog the loot, he should give up his titles, so he could then offer his opponents a small percentage of the take. Without Joshua needing to give a fair deal due to him being a champion, he can offer his opponents 10 percent of the money in a take or leave it manner, and they wouldn’t be able to do much.
Having titles complicates things. You can argue that Floyd Mayweather Jr. was smart not to keep titles for any length of time. He’d win the titles, but he often wouldn’t hold onto them. Joshua can make a lot of money if he dumps his belts, and just looks to get the best fights against top guys. I wonder what Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn feels about this.
In some respects, it’s important for fighters just starting out to win titles, considering it helps establish their credibility with the casual boxing fans. They like to see fighters marching into the ring with belts. But other than that, it doesn’t mean much to be a world champion once a fighter has established a big fan base like Joshua has. It’s almost better just to go after titles, win them, and them shuck them as quickly as possible so that you’re not forced to defend them and give a respectable cut of the revenue to the challengers.
Since Joshua values winning all the titles, he’s going to need to pay Parker a respectable percentage if he wants to get him to agree to take the fight. Parker can make good money defending his WBO title against the mostly weak contenders the World Boxing Organization has ranked in their top 15. Parker can probably hold onto his WBO title for years with the guys that the sanctioning body has ranked in their top 15. If Joshua wants to get his hands on the WBO belt, he’ll need to bite the bullet and give Parker his asking price, as I believe the New Zealand fighter will walk away if he’s not given a fair deal in the negotiations.