What’s next for Canelo, Joseph Parker, Junior Fa, Zhang and others?

Another boxing weekend is over and dusted, with Canelo Alvarez returning for a simple and predictable victory over Avni Yildirim in the title fight.

What now for Canelo, Joseph Parker and the rest?

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In general, we have to guess, even if the guesses are informed, even if we “know” what is coming for someone.

Not this time. We know What’s next for Canelo (55-1-2, 37 KOs), as it has been officially announced that the WBC and WBA super middleweight title roster will unite against WBO title holder Billy Joe Saunders, the May 8 on DAZN. There is even a trailer!

As we’ve discussed before in an attempt to move quickly from Canelo-Yildirim to something more interesting, it’s a much better fight than Yildirim was ever going to be. Saunders is as ready as he is for this kind of fight, he’s a veteran, he’s been at the world title level for years now, it’s time to do it. And the hope is that with just six months between his victory over Martin Murray and this upcoming fight, he won’t be terribly deformed and will have to devote as much if not more time to his weight than he does boxing at camp. .

Saunders is no joke, not a butt fighter, he’s a top five player at 168 and about as good a opponent as the Mexican superstar pound for pound right now. Yeah, Canelo will be the favorite and clearly yes, but that will be the case against anyone at 168 for a while.

Joseph parker

Photo by Greg Bowker / Getty Images

Look, I don’t think Joseph Parker set anyone’s world on fire with his Auckland win over Junior Fa. It was a competitive fight, certainly a lot closer than the judge who saw him 119-109, but he was advantaged and mainly engaged in business. Fa has had its moments. Parker was better.

Parker (28-2, 21 KOs) is a good fighter. At 29, he’s still young enough for a heavyweight, but you can really tell we’ve seen pretty much the same Joseph Parker since 2016, when he stepped up his competition and had his breakout year. And that year, we saw him wrestle with Carlos Takam, whose tactical choices might have cost him this fight more than anything, and make a majority decision over Andy Ruiz Jr to win the vacant WBO belt, a bout who probably would have followed Ruiz’s path. the fight was in the United States. (Parker winning was not a flight, but it was very close, and being home in New Zealand probably helped just enough.)

It has roughly the same strengths as it did then. He has pretty much the same flaws we’ve seen against Takam or Ruiz, or his win over Hughie Fury in 2017, or his losses against Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte in 2018.

Parker is sort of a top 10 heavyweight, maybe the back of the top 10 and a solid contender. He’s a pretty good all-around fighter with no “plus-plus” type attribute to his game.

What next? I imagine Derek Chisora. This fight was supposed to take place in 2019, it isn’t, and now it’s been back on everyone’s mind for a while, with both sides openly interested even before the Fa fight. Two days before the fight, Parker himself said that was what he wanted next and then a shot at possible interim title fight winner Oleksandr Usyk vs. Joe Joyce WBO.

Other

Ed Mulholland / Game Hall

• Coming soon to Avni Yildirim? I do not know. Maybe a rematch with Anthony Dirrell, who struggled to draw with Kyrone Davis on Saturday? It’s about as high as he can hope for. Yildirim is 29 and he’s the fighter he is, and if what we saw on Saturday were his “transformations” and “improvements” he might want to go back to the old ways. He’s a second or third place super middleweight who had no real deal in the ring with Canelo Alvarez. Look, it wasn’t that it was that unusual as a ranking from a sanctioning body or a binding order, because it really wasn’t. Guys at Yildirim level (21-3, 12 KOs) get high rankings all the time. There are tons of them right now – look at the rankings of any sanctioning body and scratch your head if you want to be sure. But they’re rarely drawn into a fight with a bona fide superstar that everyone is paying attention to, and that’s what happened here. A lot more people have noticed it than usual. I’m not saying it will change anything. Nothing ever really changes in boxing. Sometimes change is lip service, that’s about it.
• Although Parker’s fight was Junior Fa’s first chance to make a real breakthrough as a pro, he’s 31 and it’s a big setback for any hopes he had to become one of the best. contenders. Fa (19-1, 10 KOs) will have to go back to the drawing board a bit, but in reality it’s a finished product for the most part. A domestic scrap with Hemi Ahio (17-0, 12 KOs) could be interesting and sell some tickets in Auckland. Other than that, there’s a long way to go between the guys he’s beaten, like Devin Vargas and former Dominick Guinn, and the guy he just lost Parker to.
• McWilliams Arroyo will have the obvious target of Julio Cesar Martinez, who withdrew from their fight on Thursday. Arroyo (21-4, 16 KOs) was able to advance and fight off the enemy on very short notice Abraham Rodriguez, and he beat a stopping win for the provisional WBC flyweight title. Martinez still has the real one, and that’s what Arroyo wants next. I would expect this to happen.
• There is a clear reason why Zhilei Zhang (22-0-1, 17 KOs), 37, has never been taken very seriously as a pro by boxing fans despite being huge, d ‘have some skills and have won a silver medal in 2008. Olympics. Jerry Forrest exposed Zhang’s relatively low ceiling, coming off the canvas three times and forcing a draw when Zhang gassed after the third round. Forrest (26-4-1, 20 KOs) is kind of a solid heavyweight porter, can be a problem for prospects and even vets who need a test. He is tough and has skills; he’s someone where I think if he’d gotten the prospect treatment of going pro he might have been in a world title fight by now. Zhang could face Forrest, but will he want it, and will Matchroom want something to do with it? There is always money to Zhang hosting Anthony Joshua or someone in China.