Fabio Wardley pulled off a huge upset to wreck Joseph Parker’s dreams of becoming a two-time world heavyweight champion on Saturday and put himself in position for a shot at undisputed champion Oleksandr Usyk.<\/b><\/p>\n
The British fighter is now the number one challenger for the Ukrainian after he claimed a stunning comeback victory by stopping the veteran New Zealander in the 11th round of an entertaining and bruising battle at London’s O2 Arena.<\/p>\n
Wardley, 30, claimed the WBO interim title when he forced referee Howard Foster to stop the bout as he swarmed around former world champion Parker.<\/p>\n
The Ipswich native brought the crowd to their feet and collapsed to the floor in celebration as his corner team piled into the ring to celebrate.<\/p>\n
They were superb scenes as the former white-collar boxer continued his remarkable rise in the professional ranks.<\/p>\n
The more experienced Parker, 33, had dominated for large parts of the fight and hurt Wardley numerous times with right hands.<\/p>\n
Yet it was a right uppercut from Wardley in the 10th round which swung the bout firmly back in favour of the underdog.<\/p>\n
The former WBO champion was fortunate that there were only 10 seconds remaining in the round, and he managed to survive.<\/p>\n
However, Wardley would get his win in the next round as again he hurt Parker with a huge right hand to leave him reeling on the ropes and the Englishman did not let him off the hook.<\/p>\n
Wardley wildly threw shots and Parker, almost defenceless, was unable to respond which forced the referee to step in.<\/p>\n
This was Wardley’s 20th career win and his most important. Usyk now potentially awaits early next year.<\/p>\n
Parker risked his position as the number one contender for Usyk’s crown by taking this fight, falling to his fourth career defeat.<\/p>\n
It was a gamble that did not pay off, and he will regret not taking his chances when he had hurt Wardley earlier in the bout.<\/p>\n
Wardley looked like he was running out of steam but, just like in his last fight against Justis Huni, he had the equaliser with his ferocious right hand.<\/p>\n
Now he will wait to see when Usyk recovers from a back injury before negotiations begin for an undisputed heavyweight clash next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fabio Wardley pulled off a huge upset to wreck Joseph Parker’s dreams of becoming a two-time world heavyweight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-145368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115437492463625171","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}