{"id":250460,"date":"2025-10-30T07:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T07:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/250460\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T07:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T07:50:09","slug":"inside-the-usyk-spar-that-changed-fabio-wardleys-life-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/250460\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Usyk spar that changed Fabio Wardley’s life forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

The summer of 2018 was drawing to a close and a 23-year-old recruitment consultant called Fabio Wardley<\/a> was beginning to wonder whether his boxing career was ever going to work.<\/p>\n

He had crushed four white-collar opponents and then another four more as a professional but to say things had been stop-start would be an understatement. At that point, one of his ambitions was to simply appear on an undercard at the O2 Arena before his career was over, just so he could say he had done it.<\/p>\n

It is not to say he was unable to dream big but between boxing, sparring, training and the world of recruitment in the City, he did not have enough time to get his head down for a nap.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t know it at the time but a strange Facebook message from a man called Vlad, delivered in broken English, was about to change everything. \u201cHello Mr Fabio,\u201d it started. \u201cCome want to sparring Ukraine Oleksandr Usyk<\/a>. Four weeks. We pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

On another day, he might have deleted it straight away. Although he was almost certain it was someone on the wind up, Wardley took a screenshot and sent it to a member of his close-knit team and asked him to look into it for him. The offer, it turned out, was genuine and Wardley would soon be sharing the ring with the undisputed cruiserweight champion of the world as he prepared to take on Tony Bellew in the following November. But there was a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to work,\u201d said Wardley, when he recalled the situation during an interview with this writer in 2022. \u201cThat was the turning point really for me because he wanted me to go for a month but I was still working in a job at the time. I told them I\u2019d need a month off but they said they couldn\u2019t give it to me so I just said \u2018see you later then, I\u2019m off\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that point I thought to myself that I guess I\u2019m all in then with my boxing because if it doesn\u2019t work out I have no money basically. But I thought let\u2019s take the jump, I might as well give it a go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, 17 professional outings later, Wardley has booked himself a real fight with Usyk<\/a>, who has since moved up from cruiserweight to become two-time undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. The reality is, without that sparring enquiry, he might never have taken the leap out of the corporate world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin about five days of that Facebook message I was flying to Ukraine,\u201d Wardley says. \u201cIt was funny because I thought there would be cameras everywhere and they\u2019d probably pick me up in a limo. I thought he\u2019d train in state-of-the-art facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

As all of Usyk\u2019s sparring partners quickly find out, the Ukrainian great keeps things spartan during camp.<\/p>\n

\u201cI landed in Ukraine with my bag and there\u2019s a guy stood there with a sign that said my name,\u201d Wardley says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I walk over to him and he just grunts, he doesn\u2019t speak a lick of English. I\u2019m looking around for a nice big car but, no, I\u2019m in the back of a rusty old van with all the windows blacked out.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy seatbelt buckle is barely in place, there are holes in the seats and then it dawns on me I\u2019m just a man on my own who has responded to a Facebook message, he could be taking me anywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then he took me to the hotel and it all seemed OK. I hadn\u2019t met anyone so I didn\u2019t really know what I was doing. The driver just told me to be there again at 4pm. Next day, there he was and I went and met Usyk and his team.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a part-time pro, Wardley acquitted himself so well that he was kept on for the whole four weeks. He would go on to spend another month with Usyk for a later fight too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey couldn\u2019t be more accommodating,\u201d he adds. \u201cAfter sparring we all went and had dinner together, we sat and ate. It was a great experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

On returning home from that trip, the first away sparring experience of his whole life, he was jobless, not happy with his management situation and in need of advice. He phoned up Dillian Whyte<\/a>, another experienced pro he had shared the ring with, and they had a long conversation about who might be a good option for him moving forward. Suddenly, Whyte hung up. <\/p>\n

After 10 minutes, the Body Snatcher phoned Wardley back and suggested he could be the man to manage him. Once everything was agreed he asked when his new client would be ready to fight. Luckily, on account of his month sparring Usyk, Wardley was good to go immediately.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, his first fight under Whyte would be at London\u2019s O2 Arena, which had been the end goal for Wardley only a few months before. Not only that, it would be on the undercard of Whyte\u2019s second fight with Derek Chisora and, in a strange twist of fate, the two heavyweight veterans all but agreed to their trilogy fight<\/a> during the broadcast of Wardley\u2019s stunning victory over Joseph Parker<\/a> at the weekend.<\/p>\n

The win means Wardley will be taking a step into the unknown by challenging for a world title for the first time but, in Usyk, he will be facing a man with whom he has already shared many rounds. Now, almost exactly seven years on from that Facebook message, Wardley knows the size of the task ahead of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m going to spar Tyson Fury<\/a>, Anthony Joshua<\/a> or Usyk my brain is working at 100 per cent,\u201d he says. \u201cBut actually when I\u2019m sparring Usyk it\u2019s working at 250 per cent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really having to stay focused, switched on and pay attention to everything. I\u2019ve done two camps with Usyk in Ukraine and I\u2019d always say he was the hardest spar because you have to be so switched on. Not that you don\u2019t have to be switched on with Fury and AJ because they could spark your lights out in a split second.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s not to say Usyk can\u2019t do that but it\u2019s a different threat. Usyk can hit you with eight different punches in eight different places and you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, then he\u2019s behind you and you\u2019re thinking \u2018what\u2019s going on here?\u2019 You have to be switched onto what he\u2019s doing; his movement, his head, his foot, his front hand, where he\u2019s going, where he\u2019s not going. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s also going at a relentless pace as well, he\u2019s on you the whole time. With a lot of heavyweights you can take little breathers but Usyk doesn\u2019t care if you\u2019re tired or not, he\u2019s on you always. He\u2019s the hardest I\u2019ve ever sparred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sparring, as the old saying goes, is sparring and if Wardley shocks the world to dethrone Usyk for real, the Ukrainian will only have himself to blame for opening the door to him in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The summer of 2018 was drawing to a close and a 23-year-old recruitment consultant called Fabio Wardley was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,2989,2983,2831,2988,2981,2984,2985,2986,2987,2982,1920,2993,2992,1913,2976,2977,2990,2978,2975,2994,2772,85,2991,2974,2980,2979],"class_list":["post-250460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-community","tag-boxing-fights","tag-boxing-history","tag-boxing-interviews","tag-boxing-magazine","tag-boxing-photos","tag-boxing-rankings","tag-boxing-results","tag-boxing-schedule","tag-boxing-videos","tag-boxing-news","tag-disqualification","tag-draw","tag-fight","tag-fighter","tag-fighter-news","tag-knockout","tag-latest-boxing-matches","tag-ring","tag-ring-magazine","tag-split-decision","tag-sports","tag-technical-knockout","tag-the-ring","tag-top-fighters","tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}