The heavyweight division has always been boxing’s most dangerous playground.
Its history is littered with fallen giants, broken dreams and the kind of violence that can change the course of a fight – or a career – in a single punch.
The biggest men hit the hardest, and when two of the sport’s apex predators collide, the consequences can be devastating.
Daniel Dubois and Fabio Wardley know all about that.
Five months ago, they shared 11 rounds of bloody, brutal heavyweight warfare in Manchester. Both hit the canvas, but only Dubois emerged victorious, claiming Wardley’s WBO heavyweight title after a savage battle that left the beaten man battered and bloodied.
On Saturday, at London’s O2 Arena, they will do it all again.
They meet in a rematch of their Manchester May shootout in a fight that was announced at the O2 the day Moses Itauma came to a grinding halt against Filip Hrgovic.
Veteran referee Steve Gray has been handed the big assignment.
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(Pictures courtesy of Queensberry Promotions)
What can be taken from the first fight?
Daniel Dubois has never given much away.
In fact, it was only after the event that he told his coach, Don Charles, how nervous he had been before he fought Fabio Wardley in May. His previous fight had not ended well. He had been stopped for a second time by Oleksandr Usyk in and around the centre circle of the pitch at Wembley Stadium.
“I feel nervous every day. I’m a nervous character, that’s all I can say,” Dubois explained this week.
“I’m chaos, so I’m just holding that chaos until the fight starts. I know I’m chaos, so I just need to let go of [it on] the night.”
This week, he is a heavy favourite and the flaws Usyk exposed seem a distant memory. Dubois is astonishingly still only 29. He’s 23-3 (22 KOs) and first headlined at the O2 seven years ago when he squashed Nathan Gorman.
One would assume the doubts Dubois had going into the first Wardley fight will be replaced by confidence that he can get off the floor (twice) and still plunder Wardley to defeat.
But the challenger, too, has confidence from the knockdowns of the first bout.
“I was able to connect. So, one, I know I’ve got the power to knock him down. Two, I’m pretty confident because both of those connections weren’t the cleanest,” Wardley stated.
“They were both more glancing blows. Also, the conversation of knowing that I can take his best shots, still be on my two feet, and he seemingly can’t take mine, goes down or whatever, that brings a level of confidence as well. So, they’re all positives. Don’t get me wrong, when we’re doing the analysis, it’s not just negative, negative, negative, negative. It’s also going, ‘Okay, look, these are the areas you did well.’ Let’s double down on some of these or clean them up at least so they come off better.”
Was the first fight stopped too late?