Joseph Parker wanted to fight on against Fabio Wardley, criticises referee's 11th-round intervention

Joseph Parker has criticised the decision to stop his fight with Fabio Wardley and said that he should have been allowed to continue.

Referee Howard Foster halted Parker on his feet in the 11th round as Wardley set about him.

Parker appeared to be on his way to victory in a fight which had been intensely contested throughout and the former WBO heavyweight world champion is convinced that he should have been allowed to carry on.

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"I felt fine when they stopped the fight," Parker said afterwards. "I wanted to carry on.

"I thought I was fine but I'm not the ref," he added. "We went out there and gave it our best and he won."

Foster was also the referee in the first fight between Carl Froch and George Groves, that became famous, or infamous depending on how you look at it, for an allegedly premature stoppage.

When the stoppage came in the 11th round of the Wardley fight, Parker was leaning back into the ropes. He looked hurt and crucially the New Zealander wasn't throwing back.

He and his team though felt Parker was managing to block a lot of big incoming punches. However if, in that moment, the referee thought it was only the ropes that were holding him up, leaving him trapped and open to shots, that is a dangerous position for a boxer to be in.

Wardley in fact saw the incident quite differently and argued that Foster should actually have intervened sooner.

The Ipswich man did admit that when he was pushing for that finish he did see it as a "now or never moment".

"Maybe the ref could have called it a couple of shots earlier," Wardley suggested of the fight.

"I knew that if I caught him I could keep the gas on, keep the pressure on. I've trained extremely hard for this. I'm extremely well-conditioned. I knew all I had to do was get my shots off and stay in front of him, keep landing punches.

"I was in between staying composed and letting my hands go but I thought it was a bit of a now or never moment. I knew I probably wasn't up on the cards but it didn't faze me, it didn't bother me, I didn't mind that at all."

He pointed out that earlier in the fight, in the second round, he had Parker under real pressure, which was only relieved when Parker's gumshield fell from his mouth. That paused the contest so the mouthpiece could be rinsed and restored.

Wardley said of Parker: "He's 40 fights in, you pick up little cute tricks like that, little ways to save yourself and buy yourself some extra time.

"In the moment of course it's aggravating. But it doesn't deter me, it doesn't put me off, if anything it spurred me to know that you needed a breather there, you needed a break and I hurt you.

"All that did was spur me on to know that through the fight all I have to do is get to you and I can get you out of there."

Parker wants to resolve the controversy with a rematch.

"He's a tough man," Parker said of Wardley. "He showed that he's a warrior. All I can say is congratulations and wish him all the best for what's next. Hopefully we can have a rematch.

"Now he's moving on to a bigger fight," he continued. "I'm going to continue to go on.

"I felt I had him many times but he showed character. He showed his toughness and he kept coming back. So I give credit to him for being able to take those shots and bounce back.

"I want to go again."

(c) Sky Sports 2025: Joseph Parker wanted to fight on against Fabio Wardley, criticises referee's 11th-round intervention