By Jim Dower: WBC heavyweight champion Deontay ‘Bronze Bomber’ Wilder says WBO champion Joseph Parker was robbed on Saturday night in his 12 round unanimous decision defeat to Anthony Joshua (21-0, 20 KOs) in Cardiff, Wales.
(Photo credit: Esther Lin/SHOWTIME)
Joshua won by the scores 118-110, 118-110 and 119-109, which translates to 10 rounds to 2 by two of the judges, and 11 rounds to 1. Wilder doesn’t say what score he had Parker, 26, winning by. The boxing public had little problems with Joshua winning the fight. What the fans had an issue with was the terrible scoring by the three judges, and the referee, who looked like he was running interference for Joshua by keeping Parker off him. The Sky Sports commentator s sounded like cheerleaders at times, and they seemed to be watching another fight.
Here’s what Wilder said on his Twitter in response to the Joshua vs. Parker results:
”What a robbery…WOW! Joe Parker, great job, Bro. OMG, don’t apologize. You did nothing wrong. True champion. @anthonyjoshua. I accept 100%. P.S. Take Africa off your arm. They’re warriors. You from UK, brotha.”
Well, you can’t blame Wilder for telling it like it is. He believes Parker deserved the win, so he’s not pulling his punches by saying what he thinks his fans want to hear. Parker didn’t do enough in the last four rounds to cement the win. That was the problem he had. He let Joshua take control over the fight with his jab and keep the action at the range.
For the most part, Joshua was looking jab and connect with his right hand in the last four rounds. Of course, Parker couldn’t close the distance to get to Joshua because of the referee keeping him from getting to him. The referee played a big part in Joshua’s win tonight with the way he stopped Parker from throwing punches.
Joshua’s take problems on his left wrist allowed him to get rest breaks, and the tape looked like a weapon. The referee looked incompetent the way he allowed Joshua to fight with the loose tape on his wrist. It was risky for Parker, because if the loose tape had him in his eyes, he would have been at Joshua’s mercy. The referee intervening when Parker was attacking Joshua was a real problem. The referee didn’t resemble a referee. He did such a poor job the entire fight.
In the last half of the fight, Parker almost completely stopped coming forward trying to get in close range. You can argue that Parker was hesitant to come forward because of the way the referee kept keeping him from throwing shots in close. When you have a referee that negatively impacts a fighter’s performance like we saw tonight with Parker, it’s a real advantage for a fighter. Joshua had the perfect referee working his fight tonight. It made the fight look shady in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans, considering they saw Joshua being protected from Parker.
Wilder said this about Joshua:
”I’ll continue to try and bring you the best fights possible. Others, as you can see, want to cheat you out of your money with useless fights just to fill their pockets and to please their fantasy by make these types of fights instead of putting their very best with our very best. It’s childish at his point, but we’re going to smoke them out of there and make them fight me. You guys deserve nothing more than the best, and never forget that!”
Joshua was hurt in the 6th round after getting hit hard by a right hand from Parker. Joshua immediately ran backwards. It was this point that the referee grabbed Parker and kept him from fighting in close when Joshua was against the ropes and looking in distress.
Hearn said this to Wilder on social media:
”Contact me Wilder. I am here in my office waiting for the phone call just teleported back from Wales to London.”
Wilder will contact Hearn and see if he’s serious about wanting to make the fight with Joshua, but it’s not likely that will be the case. Hearn wants to match Joshua against Jarrell Miller in the summer, and that’s the fight that many boxing fans expect to happen. Joshua said tonight that he wouldn’t fight in the U.S, but he probably will for the Miller fight because he has less to fear from him than he does from the Bronze Bomber Wilder.
“My strategy was to stick behind the jab and that secured me another world title belt,” Joshua said. “I thought it was hard but going the twelve rounds was light work. I know the bookies say I might get a knockout but forget the hype, Parker was a world champion. This was a boxing match, not a fight. Parker said this would be war, I said this would be boxing finesse,” Joshua said.
Parker wasn’t pushing the fight the way he needed to for him to make it a harder fight for Joshua. Again, you can blame the referee for Parker not attacking Joshua more because he was stopping him from fighting on the inside. A rematch between Parker and Joshua would be the best thing. The referee tainted Joshua’s win tonight with the way he prevented Parker from fighting on the inside. This referee was even more of an issue for Parker than the referee Joe Cortez, who worked the Ricky Hatton vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight.
For the boxing fans that saw that fight, Cortez was pulling Hatton and Mayweather apart with the British fighter was attempting to work on the inside. Hatton couldn’t do anything because his entire game was neutralized by the referee. We saw the same thing happen to Parker tonight with the referee changing the outcome of the fight with the way he stopped the inside action.
The Joshua vs. Parker fight was mostly boring with a lot of jabbing and holding being done. It wasn’t the exciting fight that many boxing fans had assumed it would be. Joshua came into the fight lighter at 242 lbs., but he still looked slow as he’d been when he was fighting in the 250s. I’m starting to think that Joshua is aging faster in terms than normal fighters in terms of his cardiovascular system. Sometimes a fighter can look you, but they lose their stamina because cardio starts going downhill before the physical outward signs of age begin to show up.
