Life looks very different for Fabio Wardley these days.
The British heavyweight is preparing for his biggest test against Joseph Parker this Saturday at the O2 Arena, and is balancing something far more exhausting than fighting – fatherhood.
“Yeah, life's changed pretty dramatically, but all for the better,” Wardley told BoxingScene of the recent birth of his baby daughter. “It's fantastic, don't get me wrong, there's a few sleepless nights and a few – not that I've got much of it – but a few pull your hair out moments. But yeah, it's like you say, it's just one of those special things that you can't really explain to someone, it kind of needs to be lived.
“Obviously with boxing it's quite a selfish sport in the sense of you need to really be ambitious and it's all about me, me, me, me, and then there is a bit of a shift now between it's not all about me. It also changes the perspective of who I'm doing it for. I'm doing it for them, for the family, for everyone else now to provide more and give them a better life.”
After his grueling win over Justis Huni in June, Wardley admitted that he couldn’t “keep taking years off his life” in such punishing fights.
Now a father, does that thought weigh heavier on Wardley’s mind?
“It's not something I've sat and played with in my head too much since,” the 30-year-old said. “Again, I think it's one of those things that kind of sits in the back of your mind, but ultimately I think it would take away from me if I was to sit there and dwell on that too much. It's a reality and it's a fact that I've had to accept even before she arrived, and at the early stages of my career. So it's something that's not really going to change in me.”
Wardley, 19-0-1 (18 KOs), had to ship an incredible amount of punishment to finally deliver the knockout blow to Huni in the 10th round of their contest. That performance has many doubting if he has what it takes to compete at the top level, but Wardley is adamant that there is much to take from his showing.
“Yeah, there's a long list really and it's something me and the team have been kind of incrementally working through,” Wardley said. “I've been saying that I think it was actually in hindsight more beneficial to go through the fight like I did and it not all going swimmingly and all perfect and get rid of him in a round or two. It was the perfect night in that sense. And actually going into this Parker fight, knowing that I went through that, figured it out, and I've been able to self-identify some issues, things we need to fix and adjust, it actually takes me into my next fight with way more experience than I would have if it had gone another way.”
Now he meets Parker, a former world champion, and a man already positioned for another title shot. Wardley, though, doubts Parker or his team will be taking him lightly.
“I don't think so, no. I don't think him and his team would be that naive,” he said. “I think, because ultimately I am the one thing standing in between him and a world title shot. So I think him and his team will give this the full respect it deserves in terms of training, preparations, camp and everything else. Because I think it would sting a lot more to get within touching distance [of a world title shot] and then fall. I think that's how they would look at things. So yeah, I think him and his team are taking this seriously.”
Parker comes into the contest on the back of three standout victories over Deontay Wilder, Zhilei Zhang, and Martin Bakole, but that is not what has impressed Wardley the most.
“Yeah look it's admirable in a sense and I don't even mean just for the most obvious last three fights that everyone points to,” Wardley said, “but it takes a lot in a sense to... like he was previously a world champion, had the world title, lost it, had a bit of a dip in the middle period and has built himself and climbed all the way back. I think that deserves probably more credit or is harder than just kind of grafting away through the first time around and trying to get there. To kind of wheel yourself back around is a testament to him.”
There’s no denying Parker’s durability, though he has shown vulnerability in the past against Joe Joyce, who stopped him in 2022, and Zhang in 2024, where Parker had to climb off the canvas twice to secure victory.
“Yeah obviously, very clearly he can be hurt and he can go down,” Wardley said. “The other side to it is he does usually get back up and find a way back up to his feet. So there's always going to be a flip side to however you want to look at something. It's definitely a positive to take from but it's not really something I'm focusing on too much. We have a whole hearted fleshed out game plan which we're trying to put together on the night, and the fact that I can hit pretty hard and I've got a solid right hand is just kind of an added bonus to that as opposed to the whole thing of the game plan.”
Should Wardley win on Saturday, the path ahead leads directly to Oleksandr Usyk, the undisputed heavyweight champion, but can he entice the Ukrainian into the ring?
“Who knows, who knows,” Wardley said. “He's one hell of a character, he's an interesting person who knows what his brain, his mind might want to come up with or what might take his fancy in terms of boxing or maybe outside of that. I know he's flirted with the idea of an MMA fight or something like that I saw online so who knows coming up into the new year where he might feel like his career is going to go, but hopefully.”
Wardley also senses that Usyk’s time in the sport may be nearing its end.
“I definitely think he's got one eye on it [retirement], especially at this stage of his career and obviously his age as well,” he said of the 38-year-old. “He's at the back end, no way to say he's an old man but he's definitely at the point of looking around. He's probably scaling in his head, ‘I've got one, two, maybe three more fights left.’ However he wants to gauge it but he's definitely been thinking about it for a little while.”
And what about the idea of bringing Usyk to Portman Road, the scene of Wardley’s devastating KO of Huni and the home of his beloved Ipswich Town Football Club?
“I don't know, he does love his football so maybe but I think, don't get me wrong, it'd be a hell of a story to have Oleksandr Usyk in Ipswich,” he laughed. “To see him just strolling around the streets of Ipswich would be quite funny. But yeah, I think he's a little bit bigger than that.”
Saturday night holds everything for Wardley: a chance to prove he belongs with the elite, a shot at boxing’s ultimate prize, and most importantly, a better future for his baby daughter waiting at home.
