By Marcus Richardson: The heavyweight final four is set with Deontay ‘Bronze Bomber’ Wilder facing Luis ‘King Kong Ortiz on March 3 and Anthony Joshua fighting Joseph Parker on March 31. The winners of these 2 fights should fight each other next to settle who the No 1 heavyweight is in the division.
It might not work out in that fashion though. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is saying that Ring heavyweight champion Tyson Fury could be next for him in the summer. If that plays out as Hearn is talking, then winner of that fight could possibly face the Wilder vs. Ortiz winner in December. Hearn has no say so in what Fury will decide to do with his career if he beats Joshua in the summer.
Fury might not want to fight the winner of the Wilder-Ortiz match. It’ll be up to Fury what he wants to do if he gets past Joshua. A rematch between those 2 would be a tempting move. Fury and Joshua want to face each other to take advantage of the interest in their fight.
On one side, you have IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Joshua (20-0, 20 KOs) and WBO champion Parker (24-0, 18 KOs) will be meeting on March 31 at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. Both champions are unbeaten. Joshua-Parker will be televised on Sky Box Office in the UK. On the other side, undefeated WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder (39-0, 38 KOs) will be defending against Luis Ortiz (28-0, 24 KOs) on March 3 on Showtime Boxing at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. This is very much like a heavyweight tournament to prove who the undisputed champions are in the weight class.
The overall winner will hold all 4 of the heavyweight titles. Whoever emerges as the top heavyweight when the dust settles likely won’t stay on top for a long period of time like we saw with former heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. He was a champion for 9 continuous years. It’s going to be harder for undisputed champion to stay on top because there are a lot of good heavyweights that are slowly coming along that could knock the ultimate No.1 off his perch.
Joshua and Parker finalized their March 31 fight on Sunday. The fight will almost surely be viewed by a large crowd of 78,000 at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff. Joshua’s last fight in that stadium against Carlos Takam sold out with 78,000 fans coming to see the two heavyweight’s battle it out.
“I would like to announce the official news that myself and Joseph Parker will be fighting on March 31 at Principality Stadium in Cardiff,” Joshua said. “It is a unification heavyweight championship fight. We all know what happened last time I was in a unification heavyweight championship fight. It was grueling, it was interesting and we both left the ring with masses of respect.”
Joshua is talking about his fight with Wladimir Klitschko in their fight on April 29 last year. Joshua was down in the 6th round, but he got up and stopped Wladimir in the 11th. The 41-year-old Wladimir wasn’t a champion going into that fight. He was inactive for 2 years, and he’d lost his last fight to Tyson Fury in November 2015 in Dusseldorf, Germany. Joshua held the IBF title and he fought Wladimir for the vacant WBA heavyweight belt. Joshua-Klitschko was an excellent fight. They fought in front of 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in London, England. Wladimir was knocked down in round 5.
Joshua hit the deck in the 6th. In the 11th, Wladimir was dropped twice and stopped by Joshua. It’s impossible to know who would have won the contest if Wladimir was in his 20s, and with his late great trainer Emanuel Steward still working his corner to give him motivation and instructions. Steward was sorely missed by Wladimir in that fight. Joshua cannot afford to get put in the same position of being hurt and knocked down against Parker. He’s got a good trainer in his corner, and he’ll make sure that he doesn’t let Joshua off the hook if he hits the deck. Joshua will need to weather a ferocious storm if he gets knocked down by Parker. He won’t have the good luck of Parker backing off and letting him make it out of the round the way Wladimir let him after he knocked him down.
“Anthony Joshua is in for a huge shock,” Parker said. “Now he’s about to find out. And the world is about to find out whether AJ can really take a punch. My entire existence is now devoted to proving what the boxing world already knows,” said Parker.
The younger 26-year-old Parker absolutely wants to test Joshua’s chin to see for himself if he can take his power. Joshua had problems with the power of Klitschko, Dillian Whyte and Carlos Takam. Parker plans on going after the 6’5” Joshua’s chin to try and duplicate what Klitschko did to him. Parker doesn’t think Joshua has the power needed for him to stand up under his power.
Parker admits that he’s not sure if he can hurt Joshua or not with his best shots, but he wants to find out. Parker thinks it’ll be fun seeing if he can hurt Joshua. In the fights where Joshua was hurt, it was more of a situation where he was tired. That made Joshua vulnerable to getting hurt when he was exhausted in is fights with Klitschko, Takam and Whyte. However, Parker will need to force Joshua to fight hard enough to get him tired. Parker didn’t look sharp in his recent fights against Hughie Fury, Razvan Cojanu and Andy Ruiz Jr. Parker wasn’t vulnerable in those fights. He dominated, but he didn’t look as good as he had in his previous fights.
Parker has to put Joshua into a grueling fight in which he has to use up his energy. When Joshua is those type of fights, he’s usually landing heavy punches that gets his opponents in trouble. Parker will need to be able to take Joshua’s power and keep hitting him back enough times to hurt him. For Parker to handle Joshua’s best shots, it’s going to require that his punch resistance holds up. If it doesn’t, Parker will end up as Joshua’s 21st knockout victim.
Joshua will be getting the vast majority of the money for the fight. Joshua is expected to get between 65 to 70 percent of the purse for the fight. Parker wanted a better deal than the one he got, and that’s created some bad blood. He feels that as the WBO heavyweight champion, he deserved a better purse split than the one that he got. Parker’s co-promoter David Higgins of Duco Events negotiated the purse with Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn. Parker is also co-promoted by Top Rank. The purse split was the major issue that needed to be solved for the Joshua-Parker fight. Parker will get a better purse split in the rematch if he beats Joshua on March 31.
The official Joshua vs. Parker kick off news conference will take this this week on Tuesday in London, England. Joshua is looking to capture his 3rd heavyweight world title against Parker.
Joshua picked up the IBF heavyweight title 2 years ago in stopping Charles Marin in the 2nd round on April 9, 2016 at the O2 Arena in London, England. Some boxing fans say that Hearn bought the IBF title by offering Martin a lot of money to fight Joshua in the UK. Martin looked over-matched and he folded almost immediately without putting up any resistance. Since winning the IBF title, Joshua has defended the belt successfully in beating Dominic Breazeale, Eric Molina, Wladimir Klitschko and Carlos Takam.