Joseph Parker and Fabio Wardley are officially set for a big heavyweight showdown on October 25 in London, with the fight taking place at O2 Arena.<\/p>\n
Parker (36-3, 24 KO) had been trying to get an ordered fight with undisputed champion Oleksandr Usyk done, but Usyk\u2019s team claim a back injury, while the general belief is that Usyk simply doesn\u2019t want to fight Parker. This is not to say that Usyk \u201cfears\u201d or is avoiding Parker in a \u201cduck\u201d sense, more that Usyk, at 38, does not see Parker as a big enough fight to spend his time on, whether that\u2019s fair or not.<\/p>\n
If the WBO are to strip Usyk of their world heavyweight title, it\u2019s very possible that Parker, 33, will be elevated from interim to full title status, and the fight with Wardley could be for the WBO belt. It\u2019s also very possible that Usyk, a power player in the sport, won\u2019t be stripped, and that Parker is just not looking to sit around waiting for an Usyk fight that looks unlikely if not to be fully ruled out just yet.<\/p>\n
Wardley (19-0-1, 18 KO) is a hard-punching, determined fighter who looked out-classed in skill by Justis Huni last time out, only to land a monster right hand and knock Huni out in the 10th round. The only blemish on the 30-year-old\u2019s pro record is a draw with Frazer Clarke from March 2024, and Wardley stopped Clarke in the first round of a rematch six-and-a-half months later.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an intriguing fight because Wardley looks like he\u2019s got a real puncher\u2019s chance against just about anyone, and he\u2019s also shown he can handle adversity, hang in there, and carry his power late into a fight. But Parker is far more experienced, certainly at the higher levels of the division, and should be considered the favorite as he\u2019s on the best run of form in his career.<\/p>\n
Three undercard fights are also set for the card. Denzel Bentley will face Endry Saavedra in a 12-round middleweight fight; Lewis Edmondson will take on Ezra Taylor in a 12-round light heavyweight bout; and Royston Barney-Smith will meet Danny Quartermaine in a super featherweight clash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joseph Parker and Fabio Wardley are officially set for a big heavyweight showdown on October 25 in London,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,4496,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-403374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-news","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115158956695499300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}