Joseph Parker is considered a potential opponent for IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois to defend against on February 22nd in Riyadh. Dubois might be too powerful, young, and rugged for the 32-year-old Parker, who has become a defensive fighter.
Anthony Joshua doesn’t appear to be interested in taking the rematch with Dubois (22-2, 21 KOs) at this time due to injuries he’s still healing up from, and he wouldn’t be ready in time.
The former WBO champion Parker (35-3, 23 KOs) has put himself in a position to challenge for the title by defeating Zhilei Zhang and Deontay Wilder in back-to-back fights.
While many fans have gotten excited about those fights, Parker wasn’t that great in either of them. It was more of a case of his opponents being very old and gunshy, not throwing. Zhang, 40, looked horrible, rarely throwing anything and gassing out after five rounds. As for Wilder, 39, he wasn’t throwing anything and was just moving.
Parker’s best wins in the last two years were Wilder and Zhang. Those guys were too old to clearly understand where he’s at and whether he’s gotten better since his 11th-round knockout loss to Joe Joyce on September 24th, 2022.
I watched those three fights and didn’t see Parker improving since the Joyce fight. The only change is that he’s fought fighters who haven’t thrown punches back at him due to their advanced age.
When Zhang threw punches, he dropped Parker twice, and he was close to being knocked out in round eight. If Zhang had continued throwing in the eighth, he would have knocked Parker out easily. If you put Dubois in place of Zhang that night, Parker would have been knocked out. He wouldn’t have made it to round eight because he’s too chinny and timid.
“Dubois gets confused by boxers, and Joseph Parker has a lot of ways to win,” said Chris Algieri to Probox TV about the potential fight between IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois and Joseph Parker on February 22nd.
Algieri doesn’t mention that Dubois was robbed of a knockout against Oleksandr Usyk last year and should have won that fight. But even if you want to say that he deserved the loss, he’s still gotten a lot better in his recent fights.
“The guy has a lot of versatility, and I don’t think Dubois has seen anything near that other than Usyk, and you saw how that showed up. It was a lot of frustration, and it looked to me like he quit,’” said Algieri.
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