{"id":123217,"date":"2025-09-08T16:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/123217\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T16:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:35:07","slug":"david-higgins-questions-whether-oleksandr-usyk-will-ever-fight-joseph-parker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/123217\/","title":{"rendered":"David Higgins questions whether Oleksandr Usyk will ever fight Joseph Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Joseph Parker was ordered as the mandatory position to challenge Oleksandr Usyk for his WBO heavyweight title, but while Usyk was granted an extension to a negotiation period with Parker in order to deal with injuries, Parker and his team have instead shifted their focus towards a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.badlefthook.com\/boxing-news\/109944\/joseph-parker-vs-fabio-wardley-official-for-october-25\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">showdown with Fabio Wardley<\/a> next month, with Usyk ordered to face the winner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">\u201cIt\u2019s pleasing that they\u2019ve said Usyk must fight the winner. It\u2019s gratifying because a lot of hard work has gone into getting this position,\u201d Higgins said. \u201cI don\u2019t know [if Usyk will want to fight the winner]. There\u2019s been so little communication from the [Usyk] camp or engagement. It\u2019s hard to say. If I had to bet my house on it, I would say he probably won\u2019t want to [fight Parker]. There has been no correspondence suggesting that they want to make the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">For now Parker has a notable fight against Wardley which is expected to be a fairly fan-friendly matchup that has some real intrigue. Parker obviously can\u2019t afford to slip up in this coming fight if he\u2019s to maintain his position, but that said there\u2019s still no guarantee that Parker will ever get a shot at Usyk, even if he ultimately does get a shot at the belt Usyk currently holds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joseph Parker was ordered as the mandatory position to challenge Oleksandr Usyk for his WBO heavyweight title, but&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,6102,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-123217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123217","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=123217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}