The British heavyweight belt has a storied history, with past holders including Henry Cooper, Lennox Lewis, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua.<\/p>\n
As the two fighters made their way to the stage a large screen at the news conference displayed images of those four British heavyweight greats.<\/p>\n
“It’s big, it’s prime-time, baby. It’s a special moment. I want to be a part of the history. I want my picture to be up there,” TKV said.<\/p>\n
The pair had previously exchanged words over social media but both talked about how the rivalry has softened over time.<\/p>\n
“They once asked him what he thought of me and he said he would use me as a tune-up,” TKV explained.<\/p>\n
“I took it personally, and he took it personally the way I came at him. There was a bit of back and forth, but over time I respect Frazer a lot.”<\/p>\n
TKV enters the contest with a record of eight wins and two defeats since turning professional.<\/p>\n
“I expect a war, I expect us to go back and forth. I expect it to be that type of fight,” TKV said about Clarke.<\/p>\n
Clarke, from Burton upon Trent, is looking to rebuild momentum in the professional ranks.<\/p>\n
He won bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and enjoyed a decorated amateur career, including Commonwealth Games gold in 2018 and the 2015 national championships.<\/p>\n
Known as ‘Big Fraze’, Clarke turned professional in 2022 and fought for the British title in March 2024, drawing with Fabio Wardley<\/a> in a gruelling contest.<\/p>\n Wardley, now on the verge of a world-title<\/a> shot, later handed Clarke a first-round knockout<\/a> in their rematch, leaving him with a broken jaw that required surgery.<\/p>\n Clarke talked about the ups and down of his career, adding: “I’ll be showing everyone that I love this sport and I’ll give everything to be British heavyweight champion.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British heavyweight belt has a storied history, with past holders including Henry Cooper, Lennox Lewis, Tyson Fury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-173446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}