thrilling bout against Callum Smith in February.<\/a><\/p>\nThe clash remains a strong contender for fight of the year but was a tough one to take for Buatsi, who will look to bounce back against Parker in his first fight on home soil in over a year.<\/p>\n
The Olympic bronze medallist said he is treading cautiously ahead of the must-win encounter.<\/p>\n
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“I’m always the underdog, so if he thinks he’s one too, then great, but that’s always my mindset and that’s not even just from being a pro. I’ve always thought that from the amateurs,” Buatsi told ESPN.<\/p>\n
“I achieved a lot quite quick. So, I was thinking ‘maybe this is all fake, maybe I’m not expected to be doing this.’<\/p>\n
“I always had that underdog mindset and it hasn’t changed just because I came back [from the 2016 Olympics] with the medal and got the exposure that I needed to, it’s never changed.”<\/p>\n
A first defeat is always tough to take for a fighter, but Buatsi said he was able to deal with it because of the belief that, on another day, he would have been the one with his hand raised.<\/p>\n
“One thing I always said was I didn’t leave the ring thinking I can’t beat that guy,” Buatsi explains.<\/p>\n
“I left thinking ‘damn, I know I can beat that guy. I could have beaten that guy.’<\/p>\n
“If you lose and you’re like, ‘that’s just a better man than me,’ all right, cool, sweet. But when I left the ring, I didn’t ever think I could never be that guy. I never thought that, never ever thought that. Since the final bell to now.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Parker (26-1, 18 KOs) will look to affirm his own title aspirations after three years plagued by inactivity and injury — namely a broken hand — following his only defeat to John Ryder in 2022.<\/p>\n
A victory would be a huge statement from Parker against ESPN’s No. 7 ranked light heavyweight, Buatsi.<\/p>\n
“You just got to believe in yourself really,” Parker told ESPN.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had a few wins on the bounce, we’re here now, probably the No.1 [and] 2 behind Callum Smith is going at it and whoever wins, I feel like there’s a big, big fight on the cards next year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joshua Buatsi (L) returns to the ring against Zach Parker on Saturday.\u00a0Queensberry\/Leigh Dawney Joshua Buatsi regards himself as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-252260","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}