Before his heavyweight fight against Joseph Parker on Saturday, Deontay Wilder said he wasn’t susceptible to “ring rust,” pointing out that a year and six days removed from his previous fight, he’d scored a first-round knockout the last time out, reports www.al.com/sports.
But that was more than 14 months ago, and Parker gave Wilder the third loss of his professional career by unanimous decision at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the co-feature fight on the Day of Reckoning card.
The judges’ scoring reflected the one-sided nature of the 12-round fight as they had it 118-111, 118-111 and 120-108 for Parker.
“Dangerous fight, tough fight, we trained very hard for this,” said Parker, The Associated Press reported. “We had great momentum coming into this fight. The strategy was to stay calm, stay relaxed, stay focused ... every minute of every round. This is a great finish to the year.”
Wilder entered the ring on Saturday with a 43-2-1 career record that included 42 knockouts. Both losses and the draw came against Tyson Fury, the WBC world heavyweight champion – a title he took from Wilder.
Parker trains with Fury, and before the fight said the champ’s advice had been to stay out of the way of Wilder’s right hand. And Parker did.
Wilder dubbed himself Dr. Sleep before the fight because of what he planned to do to Parker. But Wilder was in the sixth round of the fight before he seemed to wake up. By that time, Parker had landed a big right and a left hook in the fourth round as the best connections in the first five rounds.
In the eighth round, Parker hurt Wilder with a right, and the Alabama native had to hold on during a barrage from the New Zealand fighter to survive to the bell.
After that, it was desperation mode for Wilder, but he could never connect with the right against Parker.
“My timing was off a little bit,” Wilder said. “He did a great job of avoiding a lot of my punches. I did feel like I had the upper hand, but things happen. We move on to the next step.”
A former WBO world heavyweight champion, Parker improved to 34-3, retained his WBO inter-continental heavyweight crown and won the vacant WBC international heavyweight title.
Before Saturday’s right, Wilder had fought once since he suffered back-to-back losses to Fury on February 22, 2020, and October 9, 2021, in WBC world heavyweight championship fights. Wilder knocked out Robert Helenius in the first round on October 15, 2022, in Brooklyn, New York.
