As the summer of 2017 drew to a close, the ambition for WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker was clear: take this show on the road to the UK.

He was 23 fights and 23 wins into his professional career and had the world title he won via decision against Andy Ruiz Jr. in December 2016 to show for it.

Aside from a pair of low-key six-rounders in America and one outing in Germany, all of Parker’s fights at that point had taken place Down Under. He had done everything right, but there was a feeling he needed to break some new ground if he ever wanted to really make an impression on the heavyweight picture.

Despite the absence of former unified world champion Tyson Fury, who was dealing with well-publicised battles with alcohol and drugs, British heavyweight boxing was in a good place at the time. Anthony Joshua held the IBF and WBA titles, while the likes of Derek Chisora and Dillian Whyte were also players on the world scene.

“Introducing myself to that part of the world was absolutely the strategy at that point,” Parker told The Ring. “Obviously getting fights was the first objective, but of course I had to get the wins, too.

“It was around that time when people started to know who I was in terms of this fighter from New Zealand and Samoa trying to make a stamp in the boxing world.”

The UK invasion began in September 2017, in what was the second defence of his WBO belt. Tyson’s fighting cousin, Hughie, was the opponent at Manchester Arena and Parker emerged with a majority-decision win. Although the result was deemed controversial by some, especially Fury’s team, two of the three judges had Parker winning 118-110.

Regardless of the fight, which was not necessarily a heavyweight classic, the door was now open for Parker to secure a unification clash with Joshua. The stage was set for Principality Stadium in Cardiff, where the two undefeated world champions would meet with three belts on the line in March 2018.

Although Parker became the first man to go the distance with Joshua that night, he was on the end of a wide unanimous-decision defeat and, after a 14-month reign, he was left with no belt.

Even so, the strategy had worked. Parker had become a commodity in the UK and within four months of his defeat to Joshua, he secured a showdown with Whyte at London’s O2 Arena. He was knocked down in the second and eighth round and lost via unanimous decision for the second fight in a row.

On Saturday night, for the first time since that night in July 2018, Parker (36-3, 24 KOs) returns to the venue as one of the division’s most established names. He has yet to regain a version of the heavyweight title, but if he beats Fabio Wardley (19-0-1, 18 KOs), his next fight is likely to be against undisputed champion Oleksandr Usyk.

“I can’t believe it has been seven years since my last fight there,” Parker added. “In fact, Dillian Whyte was my only fight there so far. I’m looking forward to going back there and also the crowd, getting whatever reception I’m going to get. There will be a lot of cheers for him, but I feel like I’m going to have some of the crowd cheering for me too.”

So how has life changed since his last fight beneath the dome?

“Well, I’ve had five more kids,” he says with a smile. “In terms of my training, my coaching team, how I operate, how I prepare, family life, everything is different. I feel like I am now the best version of myself.

“The one I look back at from against Joshua and then Whyte, I’m a totally different fighter with a different mindset and different preparation.”

In those days, Parker would train in Henderson, Nevada under Kevin Barry. He would leave his young family back in New Zealand and live out of a spare room at the Barry family home a short drive away from the Las Vegas strip. These days, he does his work in Dublin under Andy Lee, but his wife and children now also make the trip for training camp.

“I actually enjoy it now,” Parker says. “I love what I do. Before I just did it because I thought I had to and I think when you have passion for the sport and you love it, it makes you train that much harder, put in more work and stay more focused and disciplined.”

The fruits of such labour have been a six-fight winning run, the last three of which have been against feared punchers Deontay Wilder, Zhilei Zhang and Martin Bakole. He neutralised all three of those for the most part, but in Wardley he faces a man with an even higher knockout percentage given that he has ended 94.74 percent of his wins inside the distance.

Even so, with another slashy, backhand-happy puncher in his way, Parker has been able to apply many of the methods already honed during previous camps.

“If you look at Wilder,” Parker says. “He took his time and I think he took too much time and just let me set the pace of the fight. Then if you look at Zhang, he tired out, but if he had a bit more fitness and a bit more energy it could have been a different fight. Then with Bakole, he was a last-minute stand-in.

“I think with Wardley, he is a lot fresher. He’s young and fresh and we’ve seen he can carry power throughout the whole fight, like he did against Justis Huni. So, the preparation is still the same, but I’m going to be even fitter than I was in my last fight. I won’t be as heavy and I’m going to be a lot more agile.”

They say you can never step in the same river twice and the entire boxing landscape has changed since his last trip to the arena on the banks of the Thames. For him, although he suffered back-to-back defeats seven years ago, he still believes it was a case of mission accomplished.

“I feel like over the last seven years we have achieved what we set out to do back then,” Parker concluded. “We continue to have more fights in the UK, a few here and there in America, and some in Saudi Arabia, too. We were able to establish ourselves a bit more on this side of the world.

“We have a good following and a good support crew and every time we come back to England, there’s a lot of support on a lot of the days. It’s quite crazy thinking about it, that I’m from New Zealand, a small place in Samoa, but I’ve got good support here in England, in Ireland and on this side of the world. It’s an amazing feeling that we made it happen.”