Filip Hrgovic the new Audley Harrison? Or is there still hope for him?

Lack of head movement for one, which is why Zhang was able to land his counters. He's too up right and relies on controlling distance as his defence, that might work against smaller fighters he can keep at a distance but bigger heavies will be able to find his chin.

His movement could be better, he's always tended to be rooted in one spot too much to load up his right hand. That's not an issue in his earlier fights as his opponents feared to press him, giving him space to work. But when he faces a fighter who's either very mobile like Usyk or presses forward a lot he'll find it hard to maintain distance and position. But I will admit his movement wasn't as bad as I initially thought, he showed he could move a bit against Zhang but Zhang is a counter puncher and lacks the work rate to really put his movement to the test.

His inside game in non existent, that was clear in the Zhang fight. It was lacking in his earlier fights too but nobody really took it too him enough to make him have to work up close. In the Zhang fight he looked clueless when inside.

People always say Parker lacks fire because he's not aggressive enough. I don't really see it like that. The problem is when he unloads he doesn't have the technique to either move off or slip the counter, so whenever he unloads he gets hit back and that made him hesitant to throw as much as his earlier fights for fear of counters. Just watch the Ruiz Jr fight, he unloads early on, but gets countered a lot in return and ends up fighting more and more on the back foot because he can't mount any offence without having to pay a price for it. So as Parker stepped up in levels he became less offensive as Barry never gave him the ability to unload without getting hit back.

 

Imagine if McCall never did drugs.
Maybe a wrecking ball could not have knocked him down.

 

No, he's no Audley. He has a better prospect of becoming a top contender. Beating Zhang was no easy task.

 

Alex Leapai could punch, but nobody who saw him fight could ever accuse him of knowing what he was doing. He was so inept that Kevin Johnson (who became a timid fighter after facing Vitali years earlier) actually started throwing meaningful punches at him. You have to be doing something pretty wrong to give Kingpin that sort of confidence.

Zhang's gas tank is limited but he might be the most dangerous HW for the first three rounds of any fight and Zhang's heart is enormous. He appeared to be healthy for the Hrgovic fight but Filip was able to get off the canvas after that first round decking (and that was no flash knockdown) and get himself back into the fight. I don't think many fighters are capable of doing that.

I wouldn't favor Hrgovic over Fury or Usyk, but those fights would still be interesting to me.

 

Definitely. His poor inside game is a huge problem. I don't think all that dipsy-do head movement stuff is a big deal at HW as long as a fighter can move backwards well enough to avoid big shots. Hrgovic moves back well enough - but I don't he's got the anticipation to do that reliably enough against the big, rangey ones.

 

I've been off his bandwagon for a long time but he is nowhere near as bad as Audley. If he is switching trainers, that is good, because he needs to develop a better arsenal, but he also needs to take fights when they come his way. I think it was Hunter and Bakole that were on the table, and he let them slip by.

More than anything, he needs to stay awake in there. Sometimes it looks like he is cheapening Michael Moorer.

With Joshua, Usyk, Fury, Joyce and Wilder all 33-37 years old, Hrgovic is going to go places, but how far is up to him.

 

Zhang was robbed and only made it close due to his trash stamina, heavily affected in part by being a 40 year old