Following a brutal and one-sided rematch loss to Daniel Dubois, Fabio Wardley immediately voiced his desire to fight again while admitting his preparation this time “wasn’t ideal”.
The contest came five months after their hellacious first encounter in which Dubois, after being dropped twice in the opening three rounds, steadily pounded the resistance from his rival. The beating Wardley took back then – bloodied and bruised, he was unsteady on his feet for several rounds before the end came in the 11th – left many questioning if an immediate rematch was the right thing for Wardley to do.
Wardley, however, was determined to regain the WBO heavyweight title he’d lost. Financially, too, it would have made sense.
Dubois won the return in two rounds, dropping Wardley inside the first 20 seconds and administering a patient but clinical beating upon his rival. It was Wardley’s second consecutive defeat following a gruelling run of bouts that saw him come from behind to beat Justis Huni and Joseph Parker, after engaging in a hellacious back-and-forth 12-round draw with Frazer Clarke.
“You can really shorten it and say the preparation for me wasn’t ideal and Daniel learned the most from the first fight and came out with a better game plan,” Wardley, 20-2-1 (19 KOs), told DAZN as he made his way from the ring to the dressing room.
“That’s all it was if you want to boil it down to the nitty-gritties.
“But there’s time for that later when we go over it as a team, we sit down, and we go over the details of what happened.”
For Dubois, it’s onwards and upwards. The defeats to Joe Joyce and Oleksandr Usyk (twice) appear to have served as crucial education. As well as the two victories over Wardley, he can also boast stoppages of Anthony Joshua and Filip Hrgovic.
Wardley can take encouragement from that.
“Right now, I lost,” he said. “It is what it is. Daniel’s a testament to losing and coming back and winning the world title for a second time.
“I will be looking to do the same thing.”