Joseph Parker in the 11th round<\/a> of his last fight, dropped Dubois (23-3, 22 KOs) just 10 seconds into the bout with an overhand right, and again in the third round.<\/p>\nBut the former IBF champion rebounded both times and dominated from there by landing heavy rights that produced swelling and bleeding on Wardley’s face.<\/p>\n
“I know I’ve got heart, bundles of heart, I’m a warrior in there,” said Dubois, whose resolve had been questioned in the past. \u201cWhat a great fight, what a great battle. I’m No.1 again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wardley absorbed blow after blow without going down before referee Howard Foster halted the bout early in the 11th.<\/p>\n
In October last year, Foster was criticised for stopping the Wardley v Parker fight too early.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first professional loss for Wardley (20-1-1, 19 KOs). He was making his first title defence.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s a durable guy… a great warrior,” Dubois said. “It was an honour to be in the ring with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dubois lost his IBF belt to Oleksandr Usyk via a fifth-round knockout at Wembley Stadium last July. It was his second loss to Usyk.<\/p>\n
Dubois could be on a collision course with rising star and fellow Englishman Moses Itauma, who was ringside. <\/p>\n
WBO president Gustavo Olivieri has said after Itauma\u2019s demolition of Jermaine Franklin he\u2019ll recommend the British southpaw become the WBO mandatory challenger.<\/p>\n
Frank Warren, the promoter for both Dubois and Wardley, said in the ring, however, that there’s a rematch clause in the contract.<\/p>\n
Usyk holds the WBA, WBC and IBF belts. The 39-year-old Ukrainian\u2019s next bout is against former kickboxing champion Rico Verhoeven on May 23 at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.<\/p>\n
Chelli stuns Morrell on undercard<\/p>\n
London light heavyweight Zak Chelli scored a big upset by stopping Cuban southpaw David Morrell in the 10th round. <\/p>\n
Chelli (17-3-1, 9 KOs) called out WBC light heavyweight champion David Benavidez, who also holds titles at cruiserweight. Morrell (12-2, 9 KOs) had gone the distance with Benavidez last year, losing on points after 12 rounds.<\/p>\n
Jack Rafferty (27-0-1, 18 KOs) made a successful welterweight debut against 37-year-old Ekow Essuman (22-3, 8 KOs), whose corner retired their fighter after six rounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Dubois showed up late, got knocked down early and still beat Fabio Wardley to become a two-time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2023,111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-420562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-boxing","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}