By Ryan Burton

July 28th didn't go the way that Joseph Parker had hoped.  He entered the ring four months after his first professional loss which came against WBA/WBO/IBF/IBO champion Anthony Joshua.

Parker was boxing well until he was knocked down by a head butt that affected him throughout most of the fight.  He fought back and even knocked Whyte down in the 12th round but by that time Whyte had built up a lead and was able to secure a unanimous decision victory.

"Looking back on the fight - good on Dillian - he got the win that day. There are a lot of things that happened that we couldn't control but we will be back. It is just about learning. I got some advice from (his trainner) Kev (Barry) and sat down and watched the fight and worked on a few things that we didn't do well in the fight," said Parker.

As for the head butt, Parker said there wasn't really any way to prepare for it but said that if it happens again he will be able to deal with it better.

"These things happen in boxing. It effected the body and the mind and the plan we had in place but you can't help it. You can't practice in sparring getting a head butt for when it happens in a fight. Now that I have gone through it I think if it happened I would be able to control it better," Parker explained.

The 26-year-old Parker believes that he could have landed the big punch that dropped Whyte earlier in the fight and that is one of the things that he is working on in his current training camp for Alexander Flores.

He said that he is looking to be more aggressive to land his power earlier in his fights.

"I think I could have done that earlier on in the fight. I landed a good shot in the last round and he went down. It just shows that even though we went through a hard time in the fight - being knocked down by a head butt and by a punch - we were able to as a team survive and come back and finish strong. It is something new for us because we haven't been knocked down before but it shows that we can come back," Parker told BoxingScene.com.

Parker-Flores takes place on December 15th in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Whyte will also be back in action before year's end as he faces Dereck Chisora on December 22nd in a rematch of their 2016 Fight of the Year that Whyte took by split decision.

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