Change of plans for homesick Parker
A homesick Joseph Parker plans to change his training approach for the next phase of his boxing career.
The 26-year-old is putting the finishing touches to an eight-week training camp in Las Vegas ahead of his December 15 fight in Christchurch with Mexican American Alexander Flores.
If he can get past Flores in style, Parker hopes he can make a return to the title mix.
But that return is likely to come with some major adjustments around his family life. With two young children, Parker is seriously considering moving them and his partner Laine to Vegas for future camps.
He missed the births of both his daughters as he trained in the US.
Since linking with Kevin Barry in 2013, Parker has always lived at his trainer’s house in suburban Vegas while doing his buildup work.
But he’s finding two months away from home too much now.
With such good facilities in Sin City – he and Barry are about to expand their impressive suburban gym – it makes sense to keep training in the United States rather than being based in New Zealand permanently. So it’s a matter of working a compromise and bringing his family with him now.
‘‘It’s always hard leaving them but this has been the hardest,’’ Parker said of his latest camp.
‘‘It was hard with my first daughter, it’s even harder now there’s two.
‘‘Moving forward we are going to sit down and make a plan to have them here during camp.
‘‘It’s important to pursue the career that we want and the titles that we want to get, but there’s family time. I don’t want to be missing out on the growth [of his daughters] and just seeing them every day.
‘‘I think it would be too hard [having camps] in New Zealand. We have everything here and we don’t want to be flying sparring partners back to New Zealand. Here it is easy to find sparring partners but also, we have a great setup that has worked for the past five or six years.’’
Barry understands Parker’s emotions and sees this likely move as another stage in his fighter’s growing maturity.
‘‘His inner [self] is pretty happy,’’ Barry said.
He felt the younger Parker had benefited from the relative isolation of training in Vegas, away from his friends and temptations in New Zealand. But now he was ready to blend his training with his family life.
As for his current state of mind, Barry is happy with where Parker is at for this crucial comeback fight after suffering two losses.
‘‘I think we have ticked the boxes,’’ Barry said of making some necessary adjustments.
‘‘Joe has been very focussed this camp. He understands the position we are in . . . that this is his boxing his career and if he wants to continue to be an elite heavyweight and be talked about with elite heavyweights we need a convincing performance against Flores.
‘‘We have had that edge to our whole training camp. We are well aware we are coming off back to back losses and we have been involved in some pretty tough losses but we have used that as motivation every day in the gym.’’
* Duncan Johnstone flew to the United States with the assistance of Parker v Flores fight sponsor Flooring Xtra.
‘‘It’s always hard leaving them but this has been the hardest.’’
Joseph Parker on his two young children