By Elliot Worsell
IF, as a promoter, youโre in the business of setting up a super-fight by first having the two boxers involved in semi-finals, the last thing you want is for the first of those semi-finals to not go as planned. Itโs true, yes, that an upset in either semi-final will inevitably make you look stupid, as well as ruin the final, but to see it fall apart at the very first hurdle has a way of robbing the entire situation of all excitement, drama and fun.
This happened last night (December 23) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when a pointless fight between Anthony Joshua and Otto Wallin became all the more pointless on account of Deontay Wilder, the man Joshua should have been facing in the Middle East, failing to beat Joseph Parker in the previous fight. As a result, Joshua, 27-3 (24), walked to the ring against Wallin with his mindset switched; switched from thinking this was a necessary bridge he had to cross to make an ungodly amount of money against Wilder, in a fight talked about and delayed for years, to now seeing the Wallin assignment as just another fight; no different than previous tune-ups against similarly overmatched opponents like Jermaine Franklin and Robert Helenius.
No fault of Joshuaโs, both his performance and the result last night were impacted by the inability of Wilder to overcome Parker. After all, what did any of it matter now? Without Joshua vs. Wilder acting as fuel, which is the role it had played all week, there was no reason for Joshua to fight Wallin, much less any reason to view that fight as anything more than his two previous. That he ultimately performed well, overwhelmed Wallin in the fifth round, and forced the Swede to retire on his stool before the sixth is neither here nor there when considering the very point of Joshua, Wallin, Wilder and Parker all being in the Middle East on the same weekend. Which is to say, Joshua, had he known, could have just as easily beaten up an opponent like Otto Wallin at Londonโs O2 Arena and spared himself the Christmas Eve flight.
As it was, such is the greed of these heavyweights, it took a mission to the Middle East to simply get them to share the top table at a press conference. Sitting there, alongside promoters Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn and (more importantly) His Excellency, the narrative being pushed was that Joshua and Wilder, after years of avoiding each other, had finally come to their senses in the latter stages of their respective careers and decided to do the right thing. Only first, before claiming an astronomical payday early next year, they had to bank another one by both fighting, in separate fights, two days before Christmas.
Never, though, was it anything other than greed driving this plan. Indeed, for any promoter, British or otherwise, to sit there and proudly claim an involvement in either the semi-finals or the now-aborted final is a stretch of the imagination to say the least. These men after all had years to make Joshua vs. Wilder, and make it the right way, and at the right time, yet failed with every attempt. More interested, it seemed, in keeping their fighter unbeaten, and earning on their terms, they eventually and perhaps unwittingly created in these two heavyweights a couple of men so obsessed with money that only the influence of a sheikh would be enough to get them to listen and convene in the same room.
Given that, maybe it was written in the stars that it would โ and should โ end this way. Maybe, because of how this super-fight had been engineered, one, or both, was always going to flatter to deceive and drop the ball when crunch time arrived.
In this case that man was Wilder, who fluffed his lines, and then some, leaving Parker to thoroughly outbox him for 12 rounds and piss all over the script, sparing only the cheques. It was, in fairness to Parker, an excellent performance, one that should breathe fresh life into his career and deliver him additional paydays in the future. Careful, but neither reluctant nor hesitant, the New Zealander was never once shaken or hurt by Wilderโs right hand and, to his credit, kept the American on his back foot. He was helped, no doubt, by the rust on Wilderโs squeaking levers, and by his complete lack of timing, but Parker, 34-3 (23), certainly exacerbated these issues by boxing a smart, composed and consistent fight.
Moreover, when you consider the fact that throughout the 12 rounds Wilder landed just 39 punches (of 204 attempted โ and no body shots, by the way), Parker (who landed 89 of 255) was more than deserving of his decision win, secured in the end by scorecards of 120-108, 118-110, and 118-111.
Joshua, meanwhile, was the very antithesis of Wilder in the following fight. He, unlike Wilder, had been active of late, with this fight against Wallin being his third of the calendar year, and the momentum generated by this activity rate showed immediately. Poised, well-balanced, and able to control Wallin with footwork and feints, Joshua, in stark contrast to Wilder, resembled a well-rounded heavyweight as opposed to a heavyweight with a dangerous right hand and absolutely nothing else. He got to grips quickly with Wallinโs southpaw style, shut down any attempted attacks, and by round five was well on top, making dents in Wallinโs guard and shaking him with any number of heavy shots. It came as no surprise therefore when Wallin, having shipped a lot in the fifth round, elected to stay on his stool rather than enter the sixth. The writing, itโs fair to say, was very much on the wall and Joshua, almost incentivised by Wilderโs collapse, clearly wanted to make a statement of his own, just to give a suddenly meaningless fight a shred of meaning.
This he did, no question about it, and the win becomes all the more impressive when put in the context of other big-name, gluttonous heavyweights taking their eye off the ball in fights in the Middle East. Of this Wilder is certainly guilty, and so too was Tyson Fury, another Joshua rival, who was knocked down and almost outpointed by a mixed martial artist making his boxing debut back in October. Both of these men found themselves in the Middle East in pursuit of more money to add to the inordinate amounts they have already accrued and both, quite unexpectedly, forgot in the process about the nature of their job and the difficulty of this job. They saw only the money and not the hunger in the eyes of their opponent and for this they both paid the price; Fury was humiliated, whereas Wilder was beaten.
Still, you wouldnโt know it to listen to Wilder, all smiles, after the fight. In fact, if thereโs one thing we know by now and one thing we must get used to going forward, as the meaning of โsuccessโ in pro boxing shifts, it is this: never will you find a disappointed loser in the Middle East.