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Chinese heavyweight boxer Zhang Zhilei lost on points to Joseph Parker in Saudi Arabia, and his world title hopes were thwarted when Anthony Joshua KO’d Francis Ngannou in the night’s main event.
“Big Bang” Chan knocked Parker down twice, but as the fight progressed, the scorecards didn’t show enough results, with the judges scoring the score 113-113, 114-112, and 115-111 in Parker’s favor. did.
Instead, it was Joshua who supplied the explosives, destroying Ngannou in spectacular style. He floored the Cameroonian with a big right in the first round and repeated the trick in the second, immediately knocking him out cold after Ngannou beat the count.
The 40-year-old, who faced New Zealand’s Parker on the undercard in Riyadh, was jubilant when he put his opponent on the canvas in the third round.
Zhang defeated Joe Joyce twice last year and faced him as interim WBO champion with a record of 28 fights, one loss and one draw.
However, after that third round bomb, he offered little, and the longer the contest at Kingdom Arena went on, the more balance changed Parker’s ways.
After a tough start to the second round in which Zhang was tentative and Parker looked to disrupt the Henan southpaw, Zhang knocked Parker down with a straight left. The 32-year-old from Oakland beat the count, but was quickly back on the ropes.
Parker had seen Zhang run out of puffs in the past, so in the fourth inning when he had gained a foothold, he threw Zhang off balance with his right hand and aimed to sustain him until the end of the match with his corner. Their approach will likely prove justified.
Zhang used little force in the fifth and sixth rounds, seemed to be waiting for a chance to end the fight with one punch, and only increased his work rate slightly in the seventh. However, he became agitated because Parker feinted every time he tried to unload.
In the eighth, Parker’s right hand rocked Chan, but Chan responded by catching him with a left-right combination, causing Parker to his knees for the second count.
Further, the ninth offer was preceded by slightly more action than the tenth, where Parker was busier and ready to steal it. His tactics of avoiding the predatory Zhang early in each round and out-maneuvering him yielded further results in the 11th round.
This finally caused Chan’s cornermen to become impatient and tell him that he needed a knockout now. That victory accounted for 21 of his 26 wins, but compared to Parker’s 10, there was nothing left in the tank for a guy who only went the distance in one fight.
Parker struggled until the end, but Chan landed zero punches and sealed his fate.
“This is a great win,” Parker said in the ring. “I feel like I’m doing better now. Mr. Zhang is a tough guy and beat me twice, but we stuck to the plan. I want to go home and celebrate.”
He added that he was keen for a rematch, but the night ended with Joshua, rather than Parker or Zhang, emerging as the most credible challenger to the winner of Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk, who will meet at the same venue. In May, he won the undisputed heavyweight title.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn then sent a message to Fury, who was there to support his sparring partner Parker.
“You’re looking at the No. 1 heavyweight in the world,” Hearn said of Joshua. “No one can beat him at this rate. Tyson Fury, please beat Usyk, because it will be the biggest fight in the history of the sport.”
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