HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING WILL always be a refuge for the unexpected even in an increasingly homogenised world of professional sport.
The long and short of it is that when two huge human beings try to punch each other in the head, weird things can happen.
Ask Mike Tyson, whose 1990 defeat to 42-to-1 underdog ‘Buster’ Douglas is now a genericisation for gigantic sporting upsets. Ask the man named after ‘Iron Mike’, Tyson Fury, who was put on his arse by mixed martial artist Francis Ngannou when he was still the unbeaten ruler of his division. Ask Anthony Joshua who, after he sent Ngannou to the shadow realm, was ironed out by the right hand of 7-to-2 outsider Daniel Dubois last September.
Ahead of 19 of 20 mismatches on paper, proclamations to the effect that ‘this is heavyweight boxing’ can wear as thin as Gary Neville’s sighs of ‘this is Manchester United’. But on that 20th night, when the lights are bright and the conditions are right, the big men captivate and confound us to an extent unmatched in any other sporting spectacle. It has happened just about often enough throughout history that we’ll always watch, just in case.
Joseph Parker’s trainer, Andy Lee, was naturally keen to ensure that this compulsion remains for his boxer’s challenge of Daniel Dubois [22-2, 21KOs] when he joined both fighters and promoter Frank Warren several weeks ago to film a roundtable back-and-forth as part of the fight promotion.
Knowing well that his guy Parker [35-3, 23KOs] is among the sport’s most placid personalities, and knowing equally that IBF champion Dubois is unlikely to light up the after-dinner circuit beyond boxing, Lee produced another heavyweight turn-up for the books and turned antagonist himself.
Referring to Dubois’ attempts to earn a rematch with Oleksandr Usyk, who stopped Dubois in August 2023 on his way to world domination, Lee recalled the finish to their first bout in which Dubois was either unwilling or unable to beat the count after being dropped by a basic Usyk right hand in the ninth.
“That fight ended on a jab,” Lee said pointedly. “What was going through your mind at that time?”
Dubois, initially speechless, turned to Frank Warren to buy him some time, but Lee added over the top of Warren’s protestations, “And if you’re in the same position with Joe, how are you going to face it?”
“Nah, that was a completely different situation, you know?” Dubois eventually responded. “You see what I did to the last three opponents?”
“Yeah”, said Lee, “but when you’re in the same position or under the same pressure, you will revert back to type.”
Dubois, now in gear, snapped back with a chuckle: “Maybe you would revert back to type. I’ve seen your career.”
Laughter punctured the fraught atmosphere, albeit none of it came from Parker who was quick to remind his opponent of Lee’s credentials as a “knockout artist”.
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Oleksandr Usyk stopped Daniel Dubois in August 2023. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Lee, whose career as a fighter culminated in a middleweight world title and ended in 2017 with a record of 35-3-1 (24KOs), has arguably become even more prominent as a ‘boxing mind’ in the years since, gaining popularity to either side of Ireland as a pundit and gradually becoming one of the world’s most sought-after trainers.
Here was this intriguing tension between his two current-day roles: Lee was playing mind games as Parker’s coach, casting doubt on Dubois’ bottle when the you-know-what hits the fan. But the dramatic irony was that when Dubois’ heart was first called into question at an earlier stage of his career, it had been Lee who leapt to his defence live on television.
In November 2020, then-unbeaten prospect Dubois took a knee against English domestic rival Joe Joyce, who had jabbed his left eye socket into a mush for nearly 10 rounds. Sensing the fracture in his orbital bone and fearing for his eyesight, Dubois plainly quit, which many believe to be an irredeemable quality in an up-and-coming boxer.
Lee, though, became animated on the BT Sport mic as he tried to ward off the inevitable onslaught that awaited the 22-year-old Dubois on social media.
“Why is this culture in boxing?” he asked. “In MMA, a fighter taps out every fight. They’re not called cowards and can’t return! If a fighter (in boxing) does that to save his wellbeing, it’s like he can’t come back to the ring anymore, it’s like no one wants to see him again. That culture needs to change in boxing.”
"What is this culture in boxing? In MMA a fighter taps out and they're not called cowards or can't return. If a fighter does that to save his wellbeing it's like he can't come back to the ring - no one wants to see him again. That needs to change in boxing." - @AndyLeeBoxing 👏 pic.twitter.com/8MxM5WksPZ
Soon afterwards, Lee began his work to salvage another heavyweight from the scrapyard.
Joe Parker had been condemned to waste for different reasons, the former WBO champion’s back-to-back points defeats to English duo Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte in 2018 rendering him an afterthought, not quite a has-been at 26 but a probably-shouldn’t-have-been-to-begin-with.
As a beltholder in an era dominated by Joshua, Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury, the New Zealander had reached the Hillary Step of heavyweight boxing’s Everest: enough to say he had conquered the mountain but still one last push short of its true summit.
Parker, now 33, didn’t particularly enjoy the view. He became depressed upon his return to sea level, indulging in his relative riches back home in Auckland but simultaneously wondering whether he had ever been worthy of champion status.
He fought just four times between his defeat to Whyte at the end of 2018 and the start of 2021, rattling off wins against a couple of talented Anzac rivals and two relative no-marks from America.
Dillian Whyte celebrates victory over Joe Parker in 2018. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
Parker had previously become close with Tyson Fury after defeating The Gypsy King’s younger cousin, Hughie Fury, in a stinker of a title defence in 2017. The Gypsy King formed a kinship with Parker and, knowing intimately the troughs that can follow boxing’s peaks, made sure to keep Parker engaged in their sport during the Kiwi’s own years in relative obscurity.
They would eventually sync up their training camps, Fury on his comeback trail and Parker over from New Zealand in search of a reason not to pack it in. Fury made available to his fellow heavyweight his gym in Morecambe, Lancashire, his nearby family home, and all of the intellectual property he had collated on his route to the top.
The intersection in that particular Venn diagram was Andy Lee, a member of Fury’s extended family who just so happened to be one of the best trainers he had ever worked with.
Fury made the intro. After three or four Zoom calls, Parker flew to Dublin, where Lee picked him up at the airport. The rest isn’t quite yet history, but that’s the aim.
Lee recognised in Parker similar traits to himself: the proud Samoan-Kiwi was, first and foremost, a grown-ass man, a father and husband whose priorities were already in check. A professional similarity, however, was the widespread perception of Parker as being “almost too nice” for his sport; a compliment in any other walk of life but a backhanded one to a boxer, and one at which Lee himself was forced to bristle for many years.
Of the plethora of all-time great coaches who influenced Lee’s career (including, but not exclusive to, Nicolás Cruz Hernández, Billy Walsh, and Zauri Antia in the amateurs, as well as Emanuel Steward in the pros), it was fittingly ‘The Dark Lord’ Adam Booth who once impressed upon him that he would need to split his personality if he was to finally win a world title: leave the gentleman in the dressing room, Booth taught him, and let the fighter walk to the ring and do the rest.
Lee imparted something similar to Parker who, during their first two fights together in 2021, breathed life into his career with back-to-back wins over Derek Chisora. A more aggressive, entertaining Parker survived a first-round knockdown in their first bout to eke out a split-decision win but Lee’s influence was more pronounced after a second training camp, when the Kiwi dropped ‘Del Boy’ on multiple occasions to win their rematch with room to spare.
Parker celebrates his rematch victory over Derek Chisora. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Parker, for whom Lee would initially travel to Morecambe for fight prep, was suddenly back in demand, not quite as a contender but as an acid test for promotional A-sides with designs on a world title.
But in his third bout under Lee’s tutelage, Joe Joyce passed his Joe Parker exam emphatically. In a blood-curdling bout, Joyce unfurled a left hook in the 11th round which inflicted upon Parker a third ever defeat, and a first by stoppage.
Lee still regrets that he didn’t pull Parker out of that fight about 10 days earlier when the Kiwi came down with a virus. While Parker had long since recovered by first bell, his illness had made a balls of things towards the end of camp. Parker knew it after a round, telling Lee he was “fucked”. Lee knew it too: the writing had probably been on the walls of the jacks in Morecambe a week earlier.
The man to whom Parker these days refers as “a teacher” learned a harsh lesson that night in Manchester. It will stay with him. But Lee was back to dishing out lessons four months later, in January 2023, when Parker returned with a crude points win over blown-up cruiserweight Jack Massey that did his standing more harm than good.
Lee’s message to his student was straightforward: Parker would need to professionalise his approach to conditioning if he was to make another dent in boxing’s marquee division.
Enter George Lockhart, a world-leading weight-distribution specialist and sports nutritionist whose previous clients include Tyson Fury as well as former UFC champions George Saint-Pierre and Conor McGregor.
Lockhart assumed control of both S&C and food, helping Parker to achieve a physique with which he would able to withstand the demands of the boxing training that Lee believed necessary to turn him into a problem for the heavyweight division.
Lee, a master in understanding the psyche of a boxer, also persuaded Parker to relocate his training camps from Morecambe to Dublin. He contended that for Parker to become a heavyweight champion again, he needed to be the alpha wherever he was training, free to throw his weight around without having to look over his shoulder. Lee reckoned that training under Fury’s roof demanded a deference to The Gypsy King which was not befitting of a man with his eye on the throne.
Parker eventually came around to the idea. (So, if you’ve encountered a six-foot-four, 250-pound Pacific Islander swimming off The Forty Foot in the last couple of years, no, that wasn’t a Leinster rugby player).
Joseph Parker in colours honouring his Samoan heritage. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Imbued by his new training regime, Parker hasn’t just rewritten his third act but taken a lighter and a can of Lynx to various heavyweight scripts.
In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in December 2023, he was fed to Deontay Wilder who that same week signed a contract to finally face Anthony Joshua in his next outing.
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Parker recalls thinking simply, “Piss off.” He gave Wilder a beating.
Gaining the front foot from first bell, he bullied the American former champion to a degree that surprised even him and Lee, coming within an inch of stopping Wilder before having his hand raised by landslide. Joshua-Wilder was no more and never will be.
Last March, then, returning to Riyadh as the underdog, Parker ruined another of Eddie Hearn’s plans for ‘AJ’: he climbed off the canvas twice to take care of the division’s new bogeyman, the 290-pound Zhilei Zhang, a former Olympic champion from China who had twice destroyed Parker’s former conqueror Joe Joyce to enter the title frame.
The victories were vastly different in their execution but equally impressive. Indeed, only Oleksandr Usyk (Fury PTS x2) and Saturday’s opponent Daniel Dubois (Filip Hrgovic TKO8, Anthony Joshua KO5) have earned more eye-catching wins in the same stretch.
Champion Dubois and challenger Parker posing at London press conference back in January. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Parker will this week introduce himself to the hordes of Saudi dignitaries and spoofers as Lupesoliai Laauli-a-le-malietoa Joseph Parker, a high-chief title bestowed upon him by his parents’ native Samoa. He takes his family heritage seriously.
Boxing, incidentally, forms part of it: his father, Dempsey Parker, was named after the all-time great Irish-American heavyweight Jack Dempsey (although the family have never been entirely clear as to why).
Dempsey Parker’s dream of living up to his namesake was thwarted by a disability and so instead, he one day insisted to his eight-year-old son, Joe, that he would grow up to be a heavyweight world champion. Joe took up boxing three years later and spent the next 14 proving Dempsey right.
But if his first capture of a world title in 2016 was primarily his dad’s dream, the jarring realisation of which doubtless contributed to the ensuing comedown, the second one this Saturday will be for Joseph Parker himself. He has discovered his own love for it, in no small part thanks to his Irish trainer.
Who would have seen it coming in 2020, when Daniel Dubois’ eye socket was in bits, Andy Lee’s brow was furrowed, and Joe Parker’s fists were idle?
Well, perhaps we should have. This, after all, is heavyweight boxing.
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After reviving career with Andy Lee in Dublin, Joe Parker reaches for world heavyweight summit
HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING WILL always be a refuge for the unexpected even in an increasingly homogenised world of professional sport.
The long and short of it is that when two huge human beings try to punch each other in the head, weird things can happen.
Ask Mike Tyson, whose 1990 defeat to 42-to-1 underdog ‘Buster’ Douglas is now a genericisation for gigantic sporting upsets. Ask the man named after ‘Iron Mike’, Tyson Fury, who was put on his arse by mixed martial artist Francis Ngannou when he was still the unbeaten ruler of his division. Ask Anthony Joshua who, after he sent Ngannou to the shadow realm, was ironed out by the right hand of 7-to-2 outsider Daniel Dubois last September.
Ahead of 19 of 20 mismatches on paper, proclamations to the effect that ‘this is heavyweight boxing’ can wear as thin as Gary Neville’s sighs of ‘this is Manchester United’. But on that 20th night, when the lights are bright and the conditions are right, the big men captivate and confound us to an extent unmatched in any other sporting spectacle. It has happened just about often enough throughout history that we’ll always watch, just in case.
Joseph Parker’s trainer, Andy Lee, was naturally keen to ensure that this compulsion remains for his boxer’s challenge of Daniel Dubois [22-2, 21KOs] when he joined both fighters and promoter Frank Warren several weeks ago to film a roundtable back-and-forth as part of the fight promotion.
Knowing well that his guy Parker [35-3, 23KOs] is among the sport’s most placid personalities, and knowing equally that IBF champion Dubois is unlikely to light up the after-dinner circuit beyond boxing, Lee produced another heavyweight turn-up for the books and turned antagonist himself.
Referring to Dubois’ attempts to earn a rematch with Oleksandr Usyk, who stopped Dubois in August 2023 on his way to world domination, Lee recalled the finish to their first bout in which Dubois was either unwilling or unable to beat the count after being dropped by a basic Usyk right hand in the ninth.
“That fight ended on a jab,” Lee said pointedly. “What was going through your mind at that time?”
Dubois, initially speechless, turned to Frank Warren to buy him some time, but Lee added over the top of Warren’s protestations, “And if you’re in the same position with Joe, how are you going to face it?”
“Nah, that was a completely different situation, you know?” Dubois eventually responded. “You see what I did to the last three opponents?”
“Yeah”, said Lee, “but when you’re in the same position or under the same pressure, you will revert back to type.”
Dubois, now in gear, snapped back with a chuckle: “Maybe you would revert back to type. I’ve seen your career.”
Laughter punctured the fraught atmosphere, albeit none of it came from Parker who was quick to remind his opponent of Lee’s credentials as a “knockout artist”.
Lee, whose career as a fighter culminated in a middleweight world title and ended in 2017 with a record of 35-3-1 (24KOs), has arguably become even more prominent as a ‘boxing mind’ in the years since, gaining popularity to either side of Ireland as a pundit and gradually becoming one of the world’s most sought-after trainers.
Here was this intriguing tension between his two current-day roles: Lee was playing mind games as Parker’s coach, casting doubt on Dubois’ bottle when the you-know-what hits the fan. But the dramatic irony was that when Dubois’ heart was first called into question at an earlier stage of his career, it had been Lee who leapt to his defence live on television.
In November 2020, then-unbeaten prospect Dubois took a knee against English domestic rival Joe Joyce, who had jabbed his left eye socket into a mush for nearly 10 rounds. Sensing the fracture in his orbital bone and fearing for his eyesight, Dubois plainly quit, which many believe to be an irredeemable quality in an up-and-coming boxer.
Lee, though, became animated on the BT Sport mic as he tried to ward off the inevitable onslaught that awaited the 22-year-old Dubois on social media.
“Why is this culture in boxing?” he asked. “In MMA, a fighter taps out every fight. They’re not called cowards and can’t return! If a fighter (in boxing) does that to save his wellbeing, it’s like he can’t come back to the ring anymore, it’s like no one wants to see him again. That culture needs to change in boxing.”
Soon afterwards, Lee began his work to salvage another heavyweight from the scrapyard.
Joe Parker had been condemned to waste for different reasons, the former WBO champion’s back-to-back points defeats to English duo Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte in 2018 rendering him an afterthought, not quite a has-been at 26 but a probably-shouldn’t-have-been-to-begin-with.
As a beltholder in an era dominated by Joshua, Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury, the New Zealander had reached the Hillary Step of heavyweight boxing’s Everest: enough to say he had conquered the mountain but still one last push short of its true summit.
Parker, now 33, didn’t particularly enjoy the view. He became depressed upon his return to sea level, indulging in his relative riches back home in Auckland but simultaneously wondering whether he had ever been worthy of champion status.
He fought just four times between his defeat to Whyte at the end of 2018 and the start of 2021, rattling off wins against a couple of talented Anzac rivals and two relative no-marks from America.
Parker had previously become close with Tyson Fury after defeating The Gypsy King’s younger cousin, Hughie Fury, in a stinker of a title defence in 2017. The Gypsy King formed a kinship with Parker and, knowing intimately the troughs that can follow boxing’s peaks, made sure to keep Parker engaged in their sport during the Kiwi’s own years in relative obscurity.
They would eventually sync up their training camps, Fury on his comeback trail and Parker over from New Zealand in search of a reason not to pack it in. Fury made available to his fellow heavyweight his gym in Morecambe, Lancashire, his nearby family home, and all of the intellectual property he had collated on his route to the top.
The intersection in that particular Venn diagram was Andy Lee, a member of Fury’s extended family who just so happened to be one of the best trainers he had ever worked with.
Fury made the intro. After three or four Zoom calls, Parker flew to Dublin, where Lee picked him up at the airport. The rest isn’t quite yet history, but that’s the aim.
Lee recognised in Parker similar traits to himself: the proud Samoan-Kiwi was, first and foremost, a grown-ass man, a father and husband whose priorities were already in check. A professional similarity, however, was the widespread perception of Parker as being “almost too nice” for his sport; a compliment in any other walk of life but a backhanded one to a boxer, and one at which Lee himself was forced to bristle for many years.
Of the plethora of all-time great coaches who influenced Lee’s career (including, but not exclusive to, Nicolás Cruz Hernández, Billy Walsh, and Zauri Antia in the amateurs, as well as Emanuel Steward in the pros), it was fittingly ‘The Dark Lord’ Adam Booth who once impressed upon him that he would need to split his personality if he was to finally win a world title: leave the gentleman in the dressing room, Booth taught him, and let the fighter walk to the ring and do the rest.
Lee imparted something similar to Parker who, during their first two fights together in 2021, breathed life into his career with back-to-back wins over Derek Chisora. A more aggressive, entertaining Parker survived a first-round knockdown in their first bout to eke out a split-decision win but Lee’s influence was more pronounced after a second training camp, when the Kiwi dropped ‘Del Boy’ on multiple occasions to win their rematch with room to spare.
Parker, for whom Lee would initially travel to Morecambe for fight prep, was suddenly back in demand, not quite as a contender but as an acid test for promotional A-sides with designs on a world title.
But in his third bout under Lee’s tutelage, Joe Joyce passed his Joe Parker exam emphatically. In a blood-curdling bout, Joyce unfurled a left hook in the 11th round which inflicted upon Parker a third ever defeat, and a first by stoppage.
Lee still regrets that he didn’t pull Parker out of that fight about 10 days earlier when the Kiwi came down with a virus. While Parker had long since recovered by first bell, his illness had made a balls of things towards the end of camp. Parker knew it after a round, telling Lee he was “fucked”. Lee knew it too: the writing had probably been on the walls of the jacks in Morecambe a week earlier.
The man to whom Parker these days refers as “a teacher” learned a harsh lesson that night in Manchester. It will stay with him. But Lee was back to dishing out lessons four months later, in January 2023, when Parker returned with a crude points win over blown-up cruiserweight Jack Massey that did his standing more harm than good.
Lee’s message to his student was straightforward: Parker would need to professionalise his approach to conditioning if he was to make another dent in boxing’s marquee division.
Enter George Lockhart, a world-leading weight-distribution specialist and sports nutritionist whose previous clients include Tyson Fury as well as former UFC champions George Saint-Pierre and Conor McGregor.
Lockhart assumed control of both S&C and food, helping Parker to achieve a physique with which he would able to withstand the demands of the boxing training that Lee believed necessary to turn him into a problem for the heavyweight division.
Lee, a master in understanding the psyche of a boxer, also persuaded Parker to relocate his training camps from Morecambe to Dublin. He contended that for Parker to become a heavyweight champion again, he needed to be the alpha wherever he was training, free to throw his weight around without having to look over his shoulder. Lee reckoned that training under Fury’s roof demanded a deference to The Gypsy King which was not befitting of a man with his eye on the throne.
Parker eventually came around to the idea. (So, if you’ve encountered a six-foot-four, 250-pound Pacific Islander swimming off The Forty Foot in the last couple of years, no, that wasn’t a Leinster rugby player).
Imbued by his new training regime, Parker hasn’t just rewritten his third act but taken a lighter and a can of Lynx to various heavyweight scripts.
In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in December 2023, he was fed to Deontay Wilder who that same week signed a contract to finally face Anthony Joshua in his next outing.
Parker recalls thinking simply, “Piss off.” He gave Wilder a beating.
Gaining the front foot from first bell, he bullied the American former champion to a degree that surprised even him and Lee, coming within an inch of stopping Wilder before having his hand raised by landslide. Joshua-Wilder was no more and never will be.
Last March, then, returning to Riyadh as the underdog, Parker ruined another of Eddie Hearn’s plans for ‘AJ’: he climbed off the canvas twice to take care of the division’s new bogeyman, the 290-pound Zhilei Zhang, a former Olympic champion from China who had twice destroyed Parker’s former conqueror Joe Joyce to enter the title frame.
The victories were vastly different in their execution but equally impressive. Indeed, only Oleksandr Usyk (Fury PTS x2) and Saturday’s opponent Daniel Dubois (Filip Hrgovic TKO8, Anthony Joshua KO5) have earned more eye-catching wins in the same stretch.
Parker will this week introduce himself to the hordes of Saudi dignitaries and spoofers as Lupesoliai Laauli-a-le-malietoa Joseph Parker, a high-chief title bestowed upon him by his parents’ native Samoa. He takes his family heritage seriously.
Boxing, incidentally, forms part of it: his father, Dempsey Parker, was named after the all-time great Irish-American heavyweight Jack Dempsey (although the family have never been entirely clear as to why).
Dempsey Parker’s dream of living up to his namesake was thwarted by a disability and so instead, he one day insisted to his eight-year-old son, Joe, that he would grow up to be a heavyweight world champion. Joe took up boxing three years later and spent the next 14 proving Dempsey right.
But if his first capture of a world title in 2016 was primarily his dad’s dream, the jarring realisation of which doubtless contributed to the ensuing comedown, the second one this Saturday will be for Joseph Parker himself. He has discovered his own love for it, in no small part thanks to his Irish trainer.
Who would have seen it coming in 2020, when Daniel Dubois’ eye socket was in bits, Andy Lee’s brow was furrowed, and Joe Parker’s fists were idle?
Well, perhaps we should have. This, after all, is heavyweight boxing.
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Boxing turn up for the books