David Higgins: Joseph Parker is the A-side against Oleksandr Usyk

Depending on what direction Anthony Joshua decides to go in for his next fight, it’s possible we could a vacant WBO title fight between Joseph Parker and Oleksandr Usyk. Already looking ahead to that possibility, Parker’s promoter David Higgins wants to establish that he believes their side should take the lion’s share of the revenue being that Usyk is unproven at heavyweight.

“Usyk has not earned his stripes at heavyweight,” Higgins told Sky Sports. “Joseph Parker is the A-side and Joseph Parker has sold out the Principality Stadium with Joshua, he’s sold out The O2, with Whyte.

”He’s the A-side and so if Usyk wants to share the ring with Parker, I would be expecting 70-30 open book revenue share in Parker’s favour. I’ll get ridiculed for that, but listen, Parker has beaten Andy Ruiz, he’s sold out the Principality and the O2 and he’s a big name in the UK, so Usyk is the B-side.”

Higgins would continue to say that he believes Parker would fare better against Usyk than Anthony Joshua would, as he believes Usyk would just use his superior speed and boxing to pick Joshua apart whereas Parker is a quick big man himself.

Now, we’ve seen Higgins use this public negotiation approach in the past when working on making the 2018 title unification fight with Anthony Joshua, so we’ll just have to see how that works out here should it comes down to it.