Joseph Parker outlives old guard but remains on the outside

It is also recognition of his only other defeat, in 2022 by Joe Joyce on – as with Whyte – the evening that the then-undefeated Joyce produced his finest performance. Joyce, like Whyte, has since dramatically declined, but while victories over Wilder, Bakole and Zhilei Zhang – comparable to those over Jarrell Miller, Filip Hrgovic and Joshua that transformed Dubois’ career; Dubois himself lost and rebuilt after defeat by Joyce – are among those that have followed, it is Wardley, the former white-collar boxer who in 2018 watched Joshua-Parker from a pub, with whom he has been matched.