I don't think he would have ko'd him , but he may have won a lot more convincingly. It was like the ref would not allow Joshua to uppercut Parker. People may argue that he threw on the break , but the ref should not have been in there breaking them up in the first place. Joshua's instinct is to let lose when somebody is in close range and the ref took that play completely away from him. That ref was entirely to blame for the fight being a bit of a stinker.
Bull****. They both like to fight on the inside, so the ref's influence effectively weakkened both fighters arsenals. But we all know that such an inclination would favour the rangier fighter, and that was reflected in the compubox numbers where Joshua's jab was the most telling punch of the night. I'm not gonna call malarkey or skulduggery because as far as I know Higgins OK'd the choice of officials, but I have no doubt that the ref's "style", if you could call it that, gave Parker more issues than Joshua.
Both of them trained and prepared for inside fighting, it looked to me like both wanted to aswell, both look disapointed most the times they got split up. It definatly changed the course of the fight, nobody can get their heads around why he was doing it most the time and he made the fight worse. I also think it cost Parker more than it did Joshua. As soon as it became clear that he double jab wasnt working and Joshuas jab was doing its job well he needed to be inside but as soon as he found himself inside all he was seeing was a couple of white sleeved arms. Joshua like a bit of inside fighting but he isnt great at it. He wanted to work inside but i think Parker would be atleast matching him in there.
Yes there were times where Parker was just getting into his work,head down throwing body punches which as we all know pay dividends later on but each time the Ref just stopped it happening. Joshua did land some nice uppercuts and in the end it was the fans who lost out imo.
