Daniel Dubois v Joseph Parker

Dubois points or late KO.

Parker has a couple of good wins since the Joyce defeat and his confidence is up, but some people act like he has massively changed and improved. I put his victories against Wilder and Zhang more down to them having styles that suited Parker, rather than some great change in him. Both are low output (especially Wilder who was embarrassing that fight and barely threw) and both are largely simple one-two straight down the pipe merchants. This is bread and butter for a back foot fighter looking to counter like Parker.

Parker, like Zhang and Joyce before him, and Bakole, and to a lesser extent, Kabayel now, are all getting overrated due to one or two good wins. You could also level a similar criticism at Dubois. This is what happens when fighters off a similar level fight; you win some and you lose some, which is what is happening since the Saudis rocked up.

All the aforementioned guys have some good strengths, but they also all have glaring weaknesses. As they fight more often against each other, how well their styles match against each other will be more telling on who wins rather than who has had a decent win lately.

For me, the Parker v Joyce fight tells me more on how a fight between Dubois and Parker will go rather than Parkers more recent wins over Wilder and Zhang. They are good names on Parker's resume, but tell us absolutely nothing on how he will handle Dubois.

Parker will give Dubois trouble with his quick feet and hands, but I see Dubois slowly wearing Parker down and stopping him late (or getting a couple of knock-downs to win on points).

 

Dani

 

Good to see you on here, Billy. All of this talk about meritocracy and Parker deserving his shot (all the pundits like Catterall, Davies, and so on) but it's Martin who deserves the shot. They don't mention his name very much. Martin wiped the floor with Wilder, while Parker laboured to a boring twelve round decision. Parker again laboured to a boring twelve round decision while being dropped twice against Zhang, a man who ran away from Martin.

 

When did Kabole fight Wilder?

 

I meant to say Zhang.

 

Gotcha.

 

Martin hasn't beaten anyone worth talking about. It's all rumours. I was at the Hunter fight, Martin didn't appear to be a boogeyman.

 

I think Dubois will be too young, powerful and aggressive for Parker.
I think Joe is in his tactical prime and his prime skill wise, but physically I think he has declined. His feet aren't quite as fast as they were, his chin isn't quite as good as it was, he hits harder now but he doesn't put fast combinations together in the same way.
Zhang dropped him with basically the only two significant punches he landed and probably would've stopped him if he had better stamina and was more active.
Dubois has similar power to a Zhang but unlike Zhang is pretty fast with his feet, is aggressive and has good stamina. I don't think Parker will be able to avoid him, he'll likely be broken down and stopped late.

 

Zhang's power is in a totally different real to Dubois and every other heavweight. Dan hit Joe Joyce many many times and didn't dent him. Zhang broke his face and ended his career.

 

I don't think Dubois ever landed as often or as hard as Zhang did though. Zhang was landing flush straight lefts at will in their first fight and knocked Joyce out clean with a perfect right hook to the chin in the second.

Dubois on the other hand struggled to land against Joyce much more than Zhang did.
Joyce was using his movement well and rolling away from shots, which he tried to do in the Zhang rematch but Zhang's far superior handspeed made it pretty much impossible to do given how slow and lumbering Joyce is.

In terms of raw punching power I think they're in the same bracket.

 

Martin should've been nowhere near a ring that night. @billy nelson has addressed this countless times and that was also years ago.

 

Another fury type then? Strange how he shouldn't have been near a ring when he got defeated. He lost. Simple as that to me. I watched him and wasn't impressed and he has not really done much since. Jared Anderson is a prospect.

 

Joyce and good movement? Same bracket as Zhang in power? These are some dire takes.

 

If you go back and watch the Dubois fight then yes, you'll see that Joyce did in fact use good movement, atleast good movement for Joe Joyce. He didn't just power forward like usual he utilised a good movement heavy, jab focused gameplan with Ismael Salas as his coach. This is why Dubois struggled to consistently land clean powerful shots on him despite Joyce being known for usually having terrible defense.

And Zhang and Dubois being in the same power bracket is not at all crazy. Zhang is faster and a better counter puncher, but in terms of raw punching power there isn't that much difference between the two. And if we're gonna use common opponents then Hrgovic was stopped by Dubois, yet went the distance with Zhang and unlike in the case of Joyce, we can say that Hrgovic actually took the best shots of both guys.

 

Joyce had the best chin in the division and it got cracked when he fought Zhang.