(Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

Joseph Parker

Former beltholder Joseph Parker firmly planted himself back into the heavyweight picture and disrupted a future megafight along the way with a one-sided unanimous decision win against Deontay Wilder. 

The December 2023 victory for Parker, a +425 betting underdog, was also shortlisted as an Upset of the Year, but the overall body of work from the 31-year-old from New Zealand was more than enough to land Comeback of the Year honors.

Parker (34-3, 23 KOs) proved that an active fighter is a dangerous fighter as he finished 2023 undefeated in four fights, bouncing back beautifully from his punishing 11th-round knockout loss to Joe Joyce in September 2022. 

Parker’s comeback campaign kicked off on January 21 with a 10-round unanimous decision against Jack Massey. On May 24, Parker stopped Faiga Opelu inside one round, then knocked out Simon Kean in three rounds on October 28. The win against Kean (on the Tyson Fury-Francis Ngannou undercard) set up a massive opportunity for Parker to fight former heavyweight titlist Wilder during the Day of Reckoning show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (also the site for Fury-Ngannou). 

Just two months removed from his previous fight, Parker punished Wilder through all 12 rounds and outlanded him 89 to 39 in total punches, all while staying away from Wilder’s detonating missile of a right hand. 

(Photo by Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing via Getty Images).

The 38-year-old Wilder had fought just one round in 26 months since his third fight against Tyson Fury and complained after the clash that his timing was off. On the other hand, in that same stretch, Parker had fought a total of 37 rounds across five fights and appeared fresh. 

Parker emerged from the contest as The Ring’s No. 4-rated heavyweight and the man responsible for disrupting the long-discussed slugfest between Anthony Joshua and Wilder, which was supposed to be announced on the night of the fight for March 9 – had Wilder not lost. 

Parker is now sitting pretty atop the heavyweight pecking order and could instead be the next man in line to face Joshua, which would give him a chance to avenge his decision loss to the Brit in 2018. 

RUNNERS-UP:

Anthony Joshua finished the calendar year 3-0 – beating Jermaine Franklin, Robert Helenius and Otto Wallin – and appeared to regain his confidence and form that was questioned following back-to-back losses to Oleksandr Usyk in 2021 and 2022.

Carlos Cuadras bounced back from his unanimous decision loss to Jesse Rodriguez in 2022 by scoring the vacant WBC interim 115-pound belt with a win against Pedro Guevara; the 35-year-old finished 2023 with a record of 3-0. 

Leigh Wood suffered a shocking seventh-round stoppage loss to Mauricio Lara in February in a fight he was comfortably winning on the scorecards. But he bounced back immediately, scoring a unanimous decision win against Lara in the May rematch to win back the WBA featherweight belt he’d lost. Wood defended his title in October during a come-from-behind, seventh-round knockout win against Josh Warrington. 

Steve Claggett completed his 2023 campaign with a record of 4-0. The junior welterweight from Calgary, Canada, also went undefeated in 2022, but this was the year he beat a quartet of fighters featuring Rafael Guzman Lugo, Alberto Machado, Carlos Sanchez and Miguel Madueno to put a rough stretch from 2018-2021 behind him and advance from journeyman/gatekeeper status to a fringe contender.

Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist, writer and broadcast reporter. He’s also a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the MMA Journalists Association. He can be reached on X (Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube at @ManoukAkopyan, through email at [email protected], or via www.ManoukAkopyan.com.

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