Pretty simple question. Parks came along during a STACKED middleweight era. He beat some good B-level names and lost a close decision to the difficult southpaw Reggie Johnson when still only 21. A talented prospect entering contender status, he was diagnosed with HIV and forced to retire at 23. The odds were against him dominating that era but he was certainly good enough to be a player. Who do you see him beating and who do you see him losing to? How far does he go?
He'd have had some hellacious wars with Benn & G-Man, although I see him matching up really well with Hopkins. He had big power, though.
He was good. You never know how he would of developed. Nobody thought BHop would have gone on to do what he did. GMan is a tough call because he was cut short. Parks would have been right in the mix. Probably beats Tate. Beats Jackson. Beats Lipsey. Beats Toney maybe. I remember those days. It was a good time for Middleweight. Just getting them to fight each other.
Wasn't he scheduled to fight McClellan before he was diagnosed? Parks was decent, but lucky for him that didn't happen - McClellan would have destroyed him.
Lamar Parks beat James Toney??????? Are you on drugs???? Parks was extremely limited, and he couldn't spell defense if you spotted him the d-e-f. The type of fighter that Toney ate for breakfast. Huge mismatch. Jackson destroys him too.
Was he more limited than Tiberi? Dont be so emotional. Toney wasn't the dominating fighter you believe he was. He struggled with Reggie Johnson the older McCallum. Jackson was fading at 160. Parks beats him.
Just way too deep. In 1992, the middleweight division included in no particular order Roy Jones, Bernard Hopkins, James Toney, Mike McCallum, Gerald McClellan, Julian Jackson, Reggie Johnson, Steve Collins, Sumbu Kalambay ... and Lamar Parks. At Super Middleweight, having recently gone up, were Michael Nunn, Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn. Had the McClellan fight taken place, I think Gerald would've taken him apart. I don't recall anyone taking Parks to win that one. McClellan was steamrolling everyone at the time. I remember that night when Showtime announced the fight wasn't happening. Looking back, that was a weird time pre-internet (for most), when you'd turn on the TV expecting to see a fight and you'd find out fights were cancelled, subs were brought in and they'd recap everything that had been going on the last 24 hours that you weren't aware of.
Lots of late last minute substitutions. By the big promoters---you wondered why executives at HBO and Showtime put up with that crap. Still the worst has to be the cancelled China card. Because Arum said he was going to lose money. A deep heavyweight card with the rarest of circumstances---risky fights/competitive matchups.
I agree. My friends and I ordered that card. When we turned it on, there was just a graphic saying it had been cancelled. Didn't find out for days what happened. This content is protected
