New Zealand’s former heavyweight world champion Joseph Parker failed a dope test on the day he fought Britain’s Fabio Wardley last month, Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions have confirmed.<\/p>\n
British media had reported the 33-year-old, whose whereabouts were unclear, tested positive for traces of cocaine and could face a lengthy ban from the sport.<\/p>\n
“The Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA) last night informed all required parties that Joseph Parker returned an adverse finding following an anti-doping test conducted on the 25th October in relation to his bout with Fabio Wardley,” Queensberry said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“While the matter is investigated further, no additional comment will be made at this time.”<\/p>\n
Parker’s UK manager Spencer Brown issued a statement speaking of “total shock at the findings.<\/p>\n
“We are just waiting to speak to Joe, (promoter) David Higgins and his promoter Frank Warren. It is very early days and we will get to the bottom of it all.”<\/p>\n
Wardley stopped fight-favourite Parker in the 11th round at London’s O2 Arena in the WBO ‘Interim’ clash to earn the right to challenge Ukraine’s undisputed world champion Oleksandr Usyk.<\/p>\n
The British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC), which would decide the length of any ban, could not be reached for comment on the next steps.<\/p>\n
The UK Anti-Doping Agency (UKAD) would not comment, as is its standard practice.<\/p>\n
British boxer Liam Cameron was banned for four years after he tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, in 2018 but rules have been changed since then.<\/p>\n
Parker won the WBO heavyweight title in 2016 by defeating Mexican Andy Ruiz for the vacant belt. He lost the title to Britain’s Anthony Joshua in 2018.<\/p>\n
He had held the WBO interim heavyweight title since March last year after defeating China’s Zhang Zhilei.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand’s former heavyweight world champion Joseph Parker failed a dope test on the day he fought Britain’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-284621","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\/284621","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=284621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}