Sideline Sid Sports correspondant & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

The big event for Sideline Sid over the weekend was the Joseph Parker World Title eliminator against Carlos Takam on Sky Television. This was the real deal for Parker who was meeting a top-twenty heavyweight for the first time.

At fifty bucks for a nearly four-hour boxing show, the pay for view coverage wasn't cheap, but turned out to be entertaining night of boxing. Often the high priced pay-for-view boxing beamed in from the States, turn out to be one sided contests with long breaks between bouts.

Ducco Events ran a tight ship on Saturday night, with the preliminary fights following each other in quick succession.

However, the best part of the buildup to the main event was good match-making that produced action packed undercard contests.

Two of the prelims were taken out by the TAB outsider with a third a highly disputed win.

Jordan Tai, who is to meet Tauranga's Gunnar Jackson for a New Zealand title in July, caused the biggest upset of the night.

There were plenty of high expectations when Joseph Parker made his long walk to the ring. His Cameroon opponent is regarded as the fighter that the other heavyweight contenders have avoided like the plague.

Cut and chiseled, the Cameroon fighter made an impressive sight as he made his way ringside.

A 33 win/two loss record told the tale of a boxer, who was as desperate as his opponent to win the IBF heavyweight title eliminator.

With the victor guaranteed an IBF heavyweight title fight as the mandatory challenger, the bout was a winner take all contest.

Joseph Parker immediately took up the biggest challenge of his career and was quickly into action.

With Takam wanting to turn the bout into a brawl, Parker refused to be backed onto the ropes and frequently slipped his opponent to take the fight back to the centre of the ring.

There were plenty of bone jarring punches with both fighters taking a turn to throw flurries of hard hitting combinations and after twelve rounds of pulsating action, the kiwi boxer received a unanimous decision.

The only irritation for this boxing fan, was the continual referral to the biggest fight ever in New Zealand, blah, blah, blah. Yes it was a big fight with plenty at stake, however, delve back 80 odd years in the kiwi boxing history books and you will find the biggest crowd to attend a professional fight in New Zealand.

On the March 15, 1930, Waitara (Taranaki) fireman Tommy Donovan squared off with American Peter Sarron at the old Kilbirnie Speedway Stadium in Wellington, in front of 17,000 boxing fans. Sarron was out of the top draw of boxers going on to win the world featherweight title in 1936.

In a trilogy of fights during 1930, Donovan beat the world class American on all three occasions, drawing some 32,000 fight fans to the bouts in New Plymouth, Wellington and Dunedin.

The big question now - is Joseph Parker ready to fight for a world title fight? This boxing aficionado believes that while Parker made the step up to the big time on Saturday night, there needs to be some fine tuning before he fights for one of the world heavyweight crowns.

For mine, he needs to box from behind a jab and keep his hands up high. On Saturday night he had a tendency to drop his hands which could cost him dearly in a world title bout.

My question for kiwi boxing fans that believe Joseph Parker is the real deal right now – is Joseph at the same stage as David Tua was at his best.