Joseph Parker is being considered as a potential opponent for IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois to defend on February 22 in Riyadh. Dubois may be too powerful, young and rugged for the 32-year-old Parker, who has become a defensive fighter.
Anthony Joshua does not appear to be interested in taking on the rematch with Dubois (22-2, 21 KOs) at the moment due to injuries he is still recovering from, and he would not be ready in time.
Former WBO champion Parker (35-3, 23 KOs) put himself in position to challenge for the title by defeating Zhilei Zhang and Deontay Wilder in back-to-back fights.
While many fans got excited about those fights, Parker wasn’t that big in any of them. Rather, it was a case of his opponents being very old and gunshy, not throwing. Zhang, 40, looked awful, rarely threw anything and gassed out after five rounds. As for Wilder, 39, he didn’t throw anything and just moved.
Parker’s best wins in the past two years have been Wilder and Zhang. Those guys were too old to clearly understand where he was and whether he had gotten better since his 11th round knockout loss to Joe Joyce on September 24, 2022.
I watched those three fights and haven’t seen Parker improve since the Joyce fight. The only change is that he was fighting fighters who couldn’t knock him back due to their advanced age.
When Zhang threw punches, he dropped Parker twice, and he came close to being knocked out in round eight. Had Zhang continued to throw in the eighth, he would have easily knocked out Parker. If you put Dubois in Zhang’s place that night, Parker would have been knocked out. He wouldn’t have made it to round eight because he’s too bald and timid.
“Dubois gets confused by boxers, and Joseph Parker has a lot of ways to win,” Chris Algieri said. Probox TV about the potential fight between IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois and Joseph Parker on February 22.
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 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 close to that except for Usyk, and you saw that show up. It was a lot of frustration, and it seemed to me that he quit,” Algieri said.
