David Adeleye believes Joseph Parker (36-4, 24 KO) should have taken a knee in the 11th round instead of trying to miss Fabio Wardley (20-0-1, 19 KO) after he was seriously injured at the O2 Arena in London. Parker chose to avoid shots and Wardley kept throwing non-stop, prompting referee Howard Foster to stop the fight.
Too proud to kneel
Parker, 33, is not one to kneel. He has never done this in his fights because he is too proud and would rather face a challenge. As a result, he lost his interim WBO heavyweight title. With this, he is no longer the WBO mandatory fighter for undisputed champion Oleksandr Usyk. Wardley is the novel WBO mandatory fighter and he will receive a huge payday against Usyk in 2026.
This doesn’t have to be the end for Parker. He may come back from defeat, but he will have to be exceptionally busy now to climb back to his former position as WBO mandatory and interim champion. This may take a while.
“Joseph didn’t have that explosiveness. He was lifting too much weight,” Derek Chisora said Queensberrypresenting his theory on why Joseph Parker lost to Fabio Wardley.
Entering the fight weighing 262 1/2 pounds was Parker’s mistake. While he was powerful at his weight, he wasn’t as speedy as Wardley and seemed to lose some of his energy in rounds 9-11.
“Imagine him landing a right hand on Usyk. You can’t doubt him now,” Hamzah Sheeraz said of Wardley. “He seems to be consistently upsetting. When you do that, you become a champion. It sounds crazy now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he managed to magically upset Usyk. Maybe because he can punch.”
Wardley’s relentless attack
“Joe should have taken a knee there. He was trying to avoid his shots, but Wardley was stopping them from shooting,” heavyweight David Adeleye said. “The referee did what he had to do.”
What sank the Parker ship was the fact that Wardley wouldn’t stop throwing punches. Many heavyweights would stop throwing, take a breather, or step back to assess the damage done.
Wardley wasn’t going to do that. He kept throwing and would have kept throwing even if referee Howard Foster hadn’t stepped in to stop the fight. Parker would kneel for a moment, but it probably wouldn’t be enough. He was too hurt and too tired to survive.
“I believe he is one of the goats in boxing. It would be an honor to share the ring with him and if I get the chance, I will definitely win,” Hamzah said after his victory over Begic.
Sheeraz made this comment after saying he plans to win more super middleweight titles after moving up from 160 pounds.
“I’ll fight anyone. Look, there were boxing kings in the ring tonight and I’m trying to follow in their footsteps. So I’m just going to beat whoever I put in front of me.”
“So I’m going to take all the belts this time and inshallah, next year you will be able to see Hamzah Sheeraz as the unified champion in the 168 division,” Hamzah said.
The path to a Sheeraz-Canelo fight could open quickly if Alvarez defeats Christian Mbilli on September 12 in Riyad. Canelo’s victory will likely allow him to retain the WBC title again, while Sheeraz now holds the WBO belt after Saturday’s victory.
This would give Riyadh Season a ready-made unification fight between the two marquee names at 168 pounds.
Sheeraz’s team already seems interested in forcing the fight. Manager Spencer Brown pointed openly at Canelo after the fight when discussing the newly crowned champion’s next step.
“We are marching in the face of Canelo boxing,” Brown said.
“This is the fight we want.”
Maybe it’s finally time for Sheeraz. He has picked up back-to-back stoppage wins since moving up to super middleweight, and his size and offensive style appear to be better at 168 pounds than they were at the end of his middleweight career.
Canelo is still the bigger star by a mile, but Riyad has shown he’s willing to take on younger, undefeated fighters against established fighters if enough belts are on the line. Sheeraz seemed to be part of that conversation on Saturday night.
Robert Segal is a boxing reporter at Boxing News 24 with over a decade of experience covering fight news, previews and analysis. Known for his first-hand reporting and in-ring perspective, he delivers authoritative coverage of champions, challengers and emerging talent from around the world.
However, for a long time it seemed that this would not be an effective defense, and the final came in the 11th round when referee Mark Lyson stopped the fight, which many viewers prematurely believed.
Verhoeven performed well above expectations, causing Usyk numerous problems throughout the fight, but although he recovered from the knockdown, the kickboxing star was stopped on his feet and denied the chance to advance to the 12th round.
Tony Bellew believes Verhoeven should be given a chance to continue his career, but Mexican superstar Canelo does not share the same view.
“It was a good fight, I don’t think so [that it was was an early stoppage]I think they saved a brutal knockout.”
Usyk is expected to take some time before deciding on his next move, with some fans calling for an immediate rematch with Verhoeven while others want him to face mandatory WBC title challenger Agit Kabayel now.
As for Canelo, he will return to action in September and will look to reclaim his world titles when he fights WBC super middleweight champion Christian Mbilli in Riyad, Saudi Arabia.
a biopic chronicling the career of former featherweight champion Prince Naseem Hamed will be released in select U.S. theaters and on VOD on May 22. The film stars Amir El-Masry as Hamed and Pierce Brosnan as his longtime trainer Brendan Ingle, with Sylvester Stallone among the executive producers.
Directed and written by Rowan Athale, it premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2025 and was released in the UK and Ireland on January 9, 2026, before arriving in the Middle East via the Red Sea Film Festival. Vertical holds U.S. distribution rights, and the film was financed by AGC Studios and BondIt Media Capital.
What the movie covers
The plot follows Hamed’s rise from Sheffield, England, to a world title under Ingle, an Irish-born steelworker who ran a boxing gym in a church hall. According to the official description, the film also addresses the racism and Islamophobia that Hamed faced in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, and also focuses on his relationship with Ingle, who died in 2018.
Collider published an exclusive clip from the film on May 21 featuring Hamed’s 1994 fight against Vincenzo Belcastro. In this fight, Hamed won the European bantamweight title in 12 rounds, which was only his 12th professional contest, which was the beginning of his later career.
The warrior behind the film
Hamed, a southpaw of Yemeni heritage, finished his professional career with a 36-1 record and 31 knockouts while holding featherweight titles in multiple sanctioning bodies throughout the 1990s. Now 51, he was known for his unconventional style, pre-fight showmanship and ring walks that often ended with a fall over the top rope. In 2015, he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Following Ingle’s death, Hamed directly attributed his success to his coach Ring that without him he wouldn’t have achieved what he did in sports.
The supporting cast included Toby Stephens as promoter Frank Warren and Katherine Dow Blyton as Alma Ingle. The film lasts 110 minutes.
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