Deontay Wilder v Joseph Parker, Anthony Joshua v Otto Wallin – live

Hello and welcome to Riyadh’s Kingdom Arena for today’s eagerly awaited heavyweight twin bill. Less than two months before Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk will meet in Saudi Arabia to decide the division’s first undisputed champion since 1999, the former champions Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua are here to keep their names in the mix in boxing’s glamour weight class.

The 38-year-old Wilder, who held the WBC’s version of the heavyweight title from 2015 through 2020, has fought only twice since he was dethroned by Fury in the second chapter of their famous trilogy. But plenty of big-money fights await should he win today against Joseph Parker, the New Zealand native who held the WBO title from 2016 through 2018.

Then there’s Joshua, the 34-year-old former WBA, IBF and WBO champion, who fights the New York-based Swedish journeyman Otto Wallin in the main event. He’s built back incrementally from the consecutive defeats to Usyk that left his career at a crossroads, getting over the line in workmanlike fashion against Jermaine Franklin and Robert Helenius, but Wallin expects to offer a stiffer test.

Should Wilder and Joshua both get through, a long-awaited (and long-overdue) showdown between the pair is likely to follow. But things are never as straightforward as they appear in the red-light district of professional sport, so let’s just get through the next few hours and see where we’re at.

The first of tonight’s televised pay-per-view preliminaries is in the books with Daniel Dubois having stopped Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller in the closing seconds of a 10-round heavyweight contest to hand the American the first defeat of his career. The second is about to start as Dmitry Bivol is making his entrance before defending his WBA light heavyweight title against Lyndon Arthur.

After Bivol v Arthur concludes, it will be time for Deontay Wilder v Joseph Parker followed by Anthony Joshua v Otto Wallin. Plenty more to come between now and then.