Parker should have taken a knee against Wardley round 11

David Adeleye says Joseph Parker (36-4, 24 KOs) should have taken a knee in the 11th round instead of trying to make Fabio Wardley (20-0-1, 19 KOs) miss with his shots after he was badly hurt at the O2 Arena in London. Parker chose to try to dodge shots, and Wardley continued to throw, prompting referee Howard Foster to stop the fight.

(Credit: Queensberry/Leigh Dawney)

Too Proud to Kneel

Parker, 33, is not the type to take a knee. He has never done this in his fights because he has too much pride and prefers to face it. The result is that he lost his WBO interim heavyweight title. Along with that, he is no longer WBO mandatory for the undisputed champion Oleksandr Usyk. Wardley is the new WBO mandatory, and he is the one who will receive a massive payday against Usyk in 2026.

This doesn’t have to be the end for Parker. He can bounce back from loss, but he’s going to have to stay extra busy now for him to climb his way back to his former perch as the WBO Mandatory and Interim Champion. It may take some time.

“Joseph didn’t have the explosiveness. He was lifting too much weight,” Derek Chisora ​​said. Queensberrygives his theory on why Joseph Parker lost to Fabio Wardley.

Coming into the fight at 262 1/2 pounds was a mistake for Parker. Although he was powerful at that weight, he wasn’t as quick as Wardley, and he seemed to lose some of his steam in rounds 9-11.

“Imagine him landing a right hand on Usyk. You can’t doubt the guy now,” Hamzah Sheeraz said of Wardley. “He seems to pull off the upset consistently. If you do that, you become a champion. It sounds crazy now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulls off a magical upset of Usyk. He can because he can bang.

Wardley’s relentless barrage

“Joe should have taken a knee there. He tried to avoid his shots but Wardley kept them coming,” said heavyweight contender David Adeleye. “The referee did what he had to do.”

What sank Parker’s ship was the fact that Wardley wasn’t going to stop throwing punches. Many heavyweights would have stopped throwing, taken a break or stood back to survey the damage they had done.

Wardley had no intention of doing so. He kept throwing and would have continued had referee Howard Foster not stepped in to stop the fight. Parker taking a knee would have helped for a moment, but it probably wouldn’t have been enough. He was too hurt and too tired to survive.