More than eight months have passed since Joshua Buatsi suffered the first defeat of his career and his assessment of the situation has not softened in the interim.

That night, at ANB Arena, Riyadh, the Ghana-born Londoner dropped a close decision to Callum Smith after one of the Fights of the Year.

But does he take any comfort from the fact his maiden loss came in a hellacious battle for which he received plenty of credit? “Honestly, absolutely none," he says.

“There’s nothing that anyone can say that would make me think any different. When you go on Boxrec it says I lost, right? So I am just interested in the result and that’s what hurts.

“It doesn’t say Buatsi lost but it was a good scrap, it just says I lost and that’s something I never ever want to experience.”

As is the nature of boxing, especially the stacked light-heavyweight division, the defeat sent Buatsi (19-1, 13 KOs) straight to the back of the queue again. The 32-year-old has been professional since 2017 and therefore climbing steadily towards a world title shot for the best part of eight years. As it happened, Buatsi ultimately fell at the final hurdle before he might have expected his first crack at a belt.

Instead, he will return in a fight against fellow contender Zach Parker (26-1, 18 KOs) in the main event of Queensberry’s show at Co-op Live Arena on Saturday, live on DAZN. A second successive defeat to a domestic rival would be an unthinkable blow to his world title ambitions.

“Did I have to pick myself up after the Smith fight? Not really,” Buatsi recalls. “I don’t want to make things up that didn’t happen but of course I was very upset.

“I had my family, my faith and charity. Those three things stuck close to me and maybe they helped pick me back up if I was down and I was upset.

“But really I spent a lot of time alone. That was important because if you are around a crowd all the time it might cloud your judgement of how you feel. I made sure I had time alone to see if I really am good and to check myself.”

That alone time took him back to Africa. First to Ghana and then onto Ethiopia, where he brought in his 32nd birthday exactly 20 days after his defeat to Smith. It was also the scene of what Buatsi described as the hardest thing he’s ever done. For a man who has competed at the Olympics and at the sharp end of professional boxing too, that is saying something.

The setting was Abuna Yemata Guh, a sixth century church carved directly into the Gheralta mountains around 1,000km north of the country’s capital Addis Ababa. It is widely considered the world’s least accessible place of worship and perhaps the perfect place for a once-beaten man to soul search.

“I’m at the bottom looking up thinking ‘how am I supposed to get up that?’ There’s no harness, no safety net, no equipment. If you fall off you don’t get injured, it’s straight death. They say that mothers carry their kids up there so I thought it would be easy work for a man like me, in my 30s. But no; hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

For Buatsi, however, that challenge came at the perfect time given the circumstances.

“Definitely the perfect time,” he says. “I’m up in the hills in the middle of nowhere. I got time to be alone, ask myself some questions and check myself which is what I needed.”

The image of Buatsi, having just suffered the first defeat of his career, standing at the foot of a mountain gazing up towards the top wondering exactly how he’s going to get there is an appropriate one at this point.

He is The Ring’s No. 5-rated light heavyweight and remains fifth with the WBC and No. 6 with the WBO. He is currently not inside the top 15 with the IBF or WBA. On his return from Africa, it was not long before Buatsi returned to camp in the hopes of a late summer outing, he has had to wait until November but that has only given him and his coach Virgil Hunter more time to fine tune.

“Virgil says that no general goes to war to keep things the same,” Buatsi says. “So we have done things differently.

“It has been a very interesting camp, a long camp, but it’s been good and I’m looking forward to fighting again now. Rather than making specific changes it has just been about identifying areas of improvement.

“We have found what I obviously need to work on and we’ve been drilling that and making sure I get it right.

“I’ve had a lot of fights with other British fighters; Smith, Dan Azeez, Craig Richards, Willy Hutchinson and now Parker. They are exciting fights and the nation watches.

“Here we are again with another one on November 1.”