positive doping test<\/a> and is confident the defence mounted by his team will clear him of wrongdoing.<\/p>\nFormer WBO world champion Parker has given his first interview since he was found to have returned a positive result for a banned substance on October 25 – the day he lost at fight against Briton Fabio Wardley in London.<\/p>\n
He told the boxingscene.com website he was helping authorities with their investigation into the routine test carried out by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency (VADA) and believed his name would be cleared.<\/p>\n
“I was devastated. You have to do all these voluntary drug tests in camp and then all of a sudden you get a bit of a surprise and shock that you fail on a fight day,” Parker said, when reflecting on the moment he found out about the positive test.<\/p>\n
“You start questioning ‘why did I have that cup of tea? or why did I do this? or why did I do that?’<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of things you think about. I’ve never failed a drugs test before, so it was a surprise and shock.<\/p>\n
“So, I’m just gonna go through the process of trying to get it cleared, and I want to be in the ring as soon as possible.”<\/p>\n
![\"Joseph](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4K5VN6H_250613SBWPress_25_JPG\")
<\/p>\n
\nJoseph Parker, New Zealand boxer.
\nPhoto: Andrew Cornaga\/www.photosport.nz\n<\/p>\n
Multiple media outlets reported cocaine was the substance in Parker’s “adverse finding” but the 33-year-old denied taking any recreational drug.<\/p>\n
“In the past I’ve enjoyed myself. I wouldn’t say “recreational drugs”, but I went out and had a few beers and that,” he told boxingscene.com.<\/p>\n
“That’s the old me, when I was young fighter. Now, after every fight, all I do is go home to the wife and kids. My life is on track. I’m focused on living the best that I can live and doing the best that I can do.<\/p>\n
“I did not take any prohibited substance, I did not use performance enhancing drugs and do not support their use. I am cooperating fully with the process now underway, and I am confident the investigation will clear my name.”<\/p>\n
Parker faced the possibility of a ban of up to two years if he failed to clear his name.<\/p>\n
The Aucklander was speaking on Australia’s Gold Coast, where he was supporting good friend Jai Opetaia, the Australian who successfully defended his IBF cruiserweight title in a win over German Huseyin Cinkara.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joseph Parker (R) during his fight against Fabio Wardley. Photo: photosport New Zealand heavyweight boxer Joseph Parker says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-176148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}