Joseph Parker looked relaxed ahead of the biggest fight of his short professional boxing career tomorrow night but the same couldn't be said about his trainer Kevin Barry.

Joseph Parker's trainer Kevin Barry is angry Francois Botha has the incentive of a potentially lucrative fight against David Tua if he can get past his man on Thursday night.

Mark Hunt hasn't lost any confidence following his knockout loss to Junior dos Santos at UFC 160 in Las Vegas last month.

No one can say New Zealand heavyweight boxing prospect Joseph Parker is unprepared for his much-anticipated fight with South Africa's Francois Botha on Thursday.

Ardie Hickey has been battling a brain tumour, and boxer Bubba Tuigamala is getting in the ring to support that fight.

Dean Lonergan, the promoter of a boxing match between two dwarves, insists it's a serious fight and can't see why anyone would object.

"Kevin Barry has been telling me to fight like a big man and that's what I did."

The thing about Vegas is the untrue story seems so much more probable than the true and sport is still a mainstay of this engagingly strange city, captured in the iconic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

It was Los Angeles, almost 30 years ago. The chairs were flying through the air. So too the drinks containers. And the cussing. The air was blue. And angry red.

On the wall of Kevin Barry's gym in Rich Moriarty's house is a copy of a cheque made out by Don King to Mike Tyson.

All three Australian oval ball codes are caught up in peptide scandals, and the use of human growth hormone variants is said to be rife in boxing.

Floyd Mayweather jnr went through something of an epiphany last year while serving an 87-day jail term for domestic abuse.

Rookie professional heavyweight Joseph Parker is being lined up for his first high-visibility fight in Burbank, California, next month as a warm-up for his June bout against South African heavyweight Francois Botha.

On Monday I had lunch with a South African boxer who is known as the White Buffalo and what he had for lunch was buffalo.

Joseph Parker Ten years after he split with David Tua in acrimonious circumstances that resulted in a multimillion-dollar legal scrap, Kevin Barry is back working with New Zealand's top heavyweight boxing prospect.

Francois Botha has been in the sport too long to be unduly concerned about the Sonny Bill Williams' fight debacle in February.