Whichever decision Joseph Parker made, there would be risk. Take Door A, and you risk becoming the new Tommy Morrison. Take Door B, and you risk becoming the new Gerry Cooney.
Parker was a mandatory challenger to undisputed heavyweight king Oleksandr Usyk, and his shot at becoming the one, true champion of the world was coming. Eventually. Probably.
But Usyk claimed to be dealing with a back injury, and though he says he intends to defend his titles again early in 2026, there exists some non-zero chance that his boxing career is over.
Parker could have sat tight and waited. But, best-case scenario, squatting on his mandatory position would have gotten him his shot at Usyk next March – in which case Parker would have engaged in a total of five minutes and 17 seconds of professional action over a span of two years coming into the fight of his life.
Cooney, you may recall, fought twice in just a shade over two years before challenging Larry Holmes for the heavyweight championship in 1982, blowing out both Ron Lyle and Ken Norton in the first round across a combined three minutes and 43 seconds of activity. He fought valiantly and competitively against Holmes but ultimately was stopped in the 13th round. Cooney is still cited 43 years later as a cautionary tale about lacking the experience and activity you need prior to your shot at the big time.
For Parker, experience isn’t an issue. But inactivity could have been (along with the fact that there was no guarantee Usyk would defend against him).
So the New Zealander’s other option was to take a keep-busy fight and earn a paycheck – and risk becoming a different sort of cautionary tale.
In late 1993, Morrison had a showdown with Lennox Lewis sitting in his lap, but two days before Halloween, trick prevailed over treat when unheralded Michael Bentt stopped Morrison in 93 seconds. It is still, 32 years later, the first contest anyone mentions when citing opportunities blown in unnecessary fights.
This past Saturday, Parker fought Fabio Wardley. He risked pulling a Morrison to avoid the chance of pulling a Cooney.
And it worked out disastrously for him.
He did indeed pull a Morrison, of sorts. It took 10 rounds more for Wardley to get the job done than it did Bentt, but in the end, it was an upset stoppage loss for Parker.
Winning streak snapped. Mandatory status transferred. Title shot gone poof.
Again, there was risk either way. But Parker took the aggressive risk. He chose the proactive risk over the inactive risk.
He took the risk boxing fans surely would have preferred he take. He fought. He gave the public a show (and a scintillating show at that).
“When the months were going by, days and weeks and then months,” Parker said in a pre-fight interview with Dan Rafael, “I just thought to myself, you know, stuff this, I just want to fight. Give me anyone and everyone.”
Apologies for sounding like Teddy Atlas, but Parker behaved like a fighter.
And it is now vital that the powers-that-be in boxing do not punish him for it.
Wardley has become the mandatory to Usyk. He will likely get the next shot, and deservedly so.
But if we want to send the message that it is better to fight and fail than to sit on your rump doing nothing, then Parker cannot be forced to go to the back of the line.
I am not saying he should go directly from an upset defeat into a championship opportunity. It was not appropriate when the planned Floyd Mayweather-Zab Judah fight moved forward after Judah melted down against Carlos Baldomir, nor when Erik Morales’ loss to Zahir Raheem gave way directly to a Morales-Manny Pacquiao rematch.
But while Usyk is busy taking on Wardley early next year, Parker should be put straight back into a meaningful fight against a fellow top contender for good money.
For example, why not Parker vs. Daniel Dubois – a fight that got canceled at the last minute in February, leading Parker to move forward with an alternate opponent (Martin Bakole) and paving the way for Dubois to somewhat unfairly parlay his inactivity into a shot at Usyk.
Or maybe Parker could take on Agit Kabayel, if Kabayel is willing to risk his perfect record (and interim alphabet belt) in that manner.
Or he could square off against Filip Hrgovic. Or Efe Ajagba. Or take a rematch to his close 2024 win over Zhilei Zhang.
Any of those would be meaningful heavyweight fights, each with a handsome payday attached.
If Parker loses to any of those guys, oh well, he had his chances and he didn’t get the job done.
But if he beats one of those guys, he goes right back to the front of the line. He gets the very next shot at the winner of the hypothetical Usyk-Wardley fight.
That sends the right message to boxers everywhere – that it’s OK to take a risky fight and suffer a defeat. That one loss is not the end of the world.
It’s called a “setback,” and it should indeed set you back. But it should not send you all the way back. It should not undo all the good work you’ve done.
We can’t fall into the trap of thinking of Parker as 0-1 in his last fight. We should think of him as 3-1 in his last four, all four fights coming against legit contenders.
He became the first fighter not named Tyson Fury to defeat Deontay Wilder. He got off the deck twice to edge Zhang. He obliterated an out-of-shape but still potentially fearsome Bakole.
And then he lost to Wardley. But, let us not forget that Parker was ahead on the cards when he suffered an arguably premature stoppage call by ref Howard Foster. It was far from a resounding defeat.
If he comes back from the Wardley loss to top Dubois or Kabayel or Hrgovic or Ajagba or Zhang, that makes him four for his last five against serious opposition.
In any other professional sport, an .800 winning percentage is considered outstanding.
In boxing, it turns you into an afterthought.
I am not the first person to observe that there is too much emphasis in modern boxing on perfect records. That’s a phenomenon that’s been around forever – even a century ago, there was marketing value in an undefeated fighter. But as plenty of people have pointed out, Mayweather’s lucrative reign exacerbated it and led more fighters, managers and promoters to protect that zero for as long as they could.
Usyk and Wardley still have their zeroes (along with one draw in Wardley’s case), and that no doubt will be played up in the selling of their championship fight. I would wager my next mortgage payment that not a pre-fight press conference goes by without us hearing a declaration that “someone’s O has got to go.”
And that’s fine. Undefeated records are lovely. I don’t subscribe to the saying, “Show me an undefeated fighter and I’ll show you a fighter who hasn’t fought anybody.” Good luck making the case, for example, that Usyk hasn’t fought anybody.
But everyone in boxing – the fans, the promoters, the fighters – needs to stop using a single loss as an excuse to write off the losing fighter as a has-been/never-was/never-will-be.
Promoter Frank Warren said of Wardley and Parker before Saturday’s fight, “You have to take your hat off to them. They’re fighting men – proper, proper, fighting men.”
That they are. Boxing needs more proper fighting men like Joseph Parker who would sooner burn out than fade away.
In agreeing to face Wardley, Parker did right by boxing. Now it’s boxing’s turn to do right by Parker.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
