Joseph Parker has switched trainers from Kevin Barry to Andy Lee in hopes that he can bring his ultra-aggressive Kronk Gym approach to change his fighting style and improve his game.
Lee is one of the trainers that helped Tyson Fury defeat WBC heavyweight champion, Deontay Wilder last year in February.
Together with Krong Gym-trained Sugarhill Steward, Lee trained Fury to go after Wilder fight and fight in a more offensive attack-oriented style.
It might be more difficult for Parker to pull off that style of fighting, though, because he’s got serious stamina issues, and he seems to have lost hands speed in the last several years. Never fast, to begin with, Parker seems to have lost the little speed that he had.
Parker, 29, will be fighting Dereck Chisora (32-10, 23 KOs) next, and he’s going to need to be more aggressive to win that fight because the British heavyweight will be attacking him nonstop.
Chisora is looking a lot better than Parker right now despite having lost his last fight against Oleksandr Usyk last October.
“We’ve heard good things about Andy [Lee],” said Parker’s manager David Higgins to Sky Sports. “He’ll [Lee] be young and hungry by trainer standards, but he’s got good credentials, and we’ve heard good things.
“I think it’s exciting to see how it plays out. Now it’s time for a new chapter,” said Higgins.
It’s hard to say what Andy Lee could have done to help Parker look any better than he did in his last fight against Junior Fa on February 27th.
Fa beat Parker to the punch the entire fight and tied him up effectively. Parker was lucky to get the win over Fa because he looked poor.
Parker should have switched trainers years ago rather than waiting until he was almost 30 and starting to lose hand speed before making a move. It’s debatable whether Lee can do anything with Parker.
If he makes Parker too aggressive, he’s going to walk into many shots and get chewed up by the likes of Chisora, Dillian Whyte, or Alexander Povetkin.
If nothing else, Lee needs to train Parker to go all out for knockouts earlier in his fights rather than waiting until the last 30 seconds of the 12hth round to start expending energy.
The way that Parker fights is like a fighter afraid to gas out, so he plods round for the first 11 rounds before going all out in the last minute of the fight.
The one thing that many boxing fans believe has held former WBO heavyweight champion Parker (26-2, 21 KOs) back as a professional is he’s been too soft, which held him back from beating Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte.
Replacing Barry with Andy Lee won’t change the way Parker has been matched, though. Barry had nothing to do with Parker throwing away the last three years of his career fighting lesser opposition since 2018.
If Parker’s management continues to put him in with sub-level fighters, as they’ve been doing since his loss to Whyte, it doesn’t matter who trains him.
Parker might as well train himself if all he’s being matched against are fighters like Shawndell Winters, Alex Leapai, and Alexander Flores. There’s no improvement in Parker’s game in his last four tune-up fights, and he wasted his time taking those fights.