This content is protected For those who remember this, is it true that the ref did not allow Parker to work on the inside?
BORE he lost end off going on like parker is some supreme inside fighter guy gets clipped everytime he tried to fight on the inside hence he doesnt do it anymore - joyce, whyte, chisora, zhang
Not great, but I think people massively exaggerate its impact. Parker looked gunshy, AJ did what he had to do. I don't think it'd have changed anything. I think there's extra revisionism going on with it because Parker's on great form now while AJ looks mentally shot, so people are struggling to accept that AJ was just better at that time (and honestly, I wouldn't count him out should they fight again, but it's just hard to tell where AJ's at now).
As a Parker fan, Parker would still have most likely lost, but the ref took away the slim chance that Parker had of winning. Plus he was clearly out of his depth and slight biased towards Joshua, for example at one point Parker hit Joshua in the head and Joshua complained to the ref who then told Parker off.
At the time a lot of people were pissed at the referee for such a boring fight, to be fair it was a very dull fight. However, looking back as @elrond_buggard said - Parker was pretty gun-shy that night anyhow and respected AJ's power massively. So, I'm not sure if there was much of a difference but I don't think Parker would have done much damage via inside fighting with prime AJ.
He was horrible. That referee was pretty much Joshua’s bodyguard. Anytime Parker came close to applying any type of pressure he kept getting on Parker’s case or breaking up the fight. At a certain point Parker was completely demoralized and in my opinion Parker stopped trying and just wanted the fight to be over with.
Just figured I'd poke my head in this thread to defecate al over the notion that that was somehow a one sided victory for Joshua when it absolutely was not. None of the following are what I'd call bad scorers, and none of them had AJ winning. And yes, the referee was horribly biased and did everything in his power to prevent an actual fight from breaking out.
Parker still gave up th ghost mid way after getting a little tired. Should have used that granite chin and gone hell Mary like Chisora would but nope ran around.
Is there much doubt that Parker would win this match up these days? Joshua could definitely still win but I'd have to give the odds to Parker here.
I was watching the fight yesterday and all the YT comments were hounding the ref I think its a bit exaggerated He didn't allow any clinching and was consistent in his calling. The fight was mainly at range anyway I thought Joshua won pretty convincing so I dont think swapping the ref significantly changes the outcome