{"id":100529,"date":"2025-08-29T10:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T10:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/100529\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T10:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T10:12:07","slug":"joseph-parker-likely-to-face-heavyweight-ko-artist-next-as-usyk-fight-wont-happen-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/100529\/","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Parker Likely To Face Heavyweight KO Artist Next As Usyk Fight Won’t Happen This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Parker<\/a> is Oleksandr Usyk<\/a>\u2018s mandatory challenger, but it may be likely he isn\u2019t going to be fighting him next.<\/p>\n

Parker is one of the heavyweight division\u2019s form men right now. In his last three fights, he has beaten American Deontay Wilder<\/a> and China\u2019s Zhilei Zhang, both on points, and last time out, he got an impressive second round KO victory over Martin Bakole. Bakole was a late stand-in for Daniel Dubois<\/a>, who fell ill in the final hours before the fight, meaning Parker missed out on his shot at the IBF world championship.<\/p>\n

He should be fighting Usyk next, though the two-time undisputed ruler has not engaged in negotiations and claimed he had a back injury.<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking to Boxing News,<\/a> Parker\u2019s manager Spencer Brown revealed a three-man shortlist Parker could face instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019ll defend his interim title before Christmas, he\u2019ll have to, cause he\u2019ll have to have a fight. I think he\u2019ll fight an English guy, one of the top-level English guys.<\/p>\n

\u2018Whether it\u2019s Dubois, whether its Fabio Wardley, there\u2019s quite a few to choose from at the moment. It might be Derek Chisora, he\u2019s got himself into a great place.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo he will fight, in my opinion, one of those three. There\u2019s one person, I can\u2019t tell you, who particularly sticks out who I think the fight will happen with.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has since been reported by Everything Boxing<\/a> that Wardley is the current frontrunner for the fight, with the unbeaten Brit potentially set for a big step up against Parker, fresh from his knockout victory over Justis Huni back in June.<\/a><\/p>\n

Wardley has an undefeated record of 19 wins and one draw, with 18 of his victories coming by knockout, with Parker potentially tasked with facing another huge puncher if the fight does come to fruition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joseph Parker is Oleksandr Usyk\u2018s mandatory challenger, but it may be likely he isn\u2019t going to be fighting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-100529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}