Buatsi’s progress has stalled in recent years through promotional disputes and long spells of inactivity.<\/p>\n
Once tipped as the future of British boxing, he now finds himself trying to fulfil that early promise – perhaps in what feels like a final roll of the dice – under new promotional backing.<\/p>\n
He began cautiously, with neither fighter willing to overcommit in a cagey opening few rounds.<\/p>\n
Parker, whose only previous defeat came at super-middleweight against John Ryder in 2022 after breaking his hand mid-fight, was making just his second appearance at light-heavyweight.<\/p>\n
By the halfway stage, Parker had made it competitive, making life awkward for Buatsi, who worked behind a tight guard to edge the cleaner rounds.<\/p>\n
The crowd’s patience wore thin amid frequent holding, with Parker slipping to the canvas several times during clinches.<\/p>\n
Parker finished the stronger, but many rounds were difficult to score. Although, former world champion Carl Frampton – commentating on Dazn – had it particularly wide in favour of Parker, giving Buatsi just one round. <\/p>\n
Buatsi moves on, but with the likes of heavy hitter David Benavidez, and Russian star Dmitry Bivol ruling the division, the road to world glory – on this evidence – still looks steep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buatsi’s progress has stalled in recent years through promotional disputes and long spells of inactivity. Once tipped as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-257190","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\/257190","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=257190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}