Kiwi fighter seeks ‘mature’ display
Joseph Parker wants to show his growing maturity when he finishes a testing year in Christchurch.
The 26-year-old takes on Mexican-American Alexander Flores on December 15 in a fight he needs to win impressively to get his career back on track.
Consecutive losses to Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte have dented his record to 24-2 but certainly haven’t hit his confidence or bank balance.
He believes 2018 has still been ‘‘a good year’’, one which he feels he has learnt plenty. He wants to display that against the unheralded but hard-hitting Flores.
‘‘I just want to show maturity, that I have been learning and progressing in the ring,’’ Parker said during training at his Las Vegas camp.
‘‘Even though I have the losses, it’s been a good year . . . fighting in front of two massive crowds, learning, progressing. Even though we have had losses, you can only learn from them.
‘‘Now we want to finish the year off well. This is our rebuild phase. We have dropped quite a bit, we have to take steps to get back up there.’’
Team Parker make no excuses about needing to hit the reset button with a return to New Zealand after being on the global stage and believe a dominant performance against Flores can catapult the fighter back into the top mix, where he hasn’t shrugged opponents.
‘‘I can’t speak for everyone else but if everyone took the big fights and the hard fights that are out there it would make it more exciting,’’ Parker said of the current division.
‘‘We have proven we want to fight the best and even though we haven’t got the best results we want to climb back to the top and fight those guys again.
‘‘We believe we belong at the top, we’ve just got to work on a few things.’’
And the south Aucklander insisted there were no confidence concerns despite the unusual position he now finds himself in.
‘‘I wouldn’t be taking fights if I didn’t think I could beat the fighters I’m getting in the ring with,’’ he said.
‘‘Whoever they put in front of me, I’m always going to back myself and I’m always confident I can do the job.’’