LONDON – Fabio Wardley is relishing the prospect of fighting Oleksandr Usyk after stopping Joseph Parker to record his finest victory.
The 30 year old was behind on two of the three scorecards and drawing on the third when, in the 11th round at London’s O2 Arena, he forced the intervention of the referee Howard Foster and, in so doing, moved into position to challenge for the undisputed heavyweight title in 2026.
Wardley, a 21-fight professional who watched Anthony Joshua beat Parker from 2018 in a pub, entered professional boxing after a late introduction to the sport as a white-collar fighter. Victory over Parker gave him victory not only as the underdog but over a former world champion who was considered the favourite; it also, according to his promoter Frank Warren, means that he will fight one of the finest heavyweights ever next.
Whether, aged 38, Ukraine’s Usyk will ever fight again remains uncertain, but Wardley can justifiably claim that he is the most deserving contender on the planet, and revealed that despite his inexperience, modest boxing background and technical limitations, it is a fight about which he has long allowed himself to dream.
“That has been the goal for a number of years now,” he said. “That’s been the objective. That’s been everything I’ve wanted. So, yeah, look, we’re there. It’s a wild one to say but one of the generational talents, one of the best ever, for all the marbles.
“There’s nothing more I could ask for. There’s nothing more I could want within this sport. Just like everything else that’s led me here, all I’ve ever asked for is the opportunity and I’ve got that and I’m not planning on stopping here. I’m not planning on getting in the ring with Usyk and going ‘Thanks for having me’ and just rolling over. That’s not what I’m about. I think you saw that [against Parker]. So, yeah, look, when that bell does go and me and Usyk do finally get in the ring, he’s going to have to work for it.
“[Instead of London’s Wembley Stadium] I think I’d like to go overseas. I think I’d like to do something somewhere overseas; bigger; something different. Maybe America. I haven’t been able to go over there yet. Something like that. I don’t know. Ultimately, it could be in my back garden. I wouldn’t care. Tell Usyk to turn up. Give him the directions to [my hometown of] Ipswich. I’ll give him my postcode. He can come find me and we can do it in the garden. I don’t care. As long as he’s there, bring his belts. Let’s get this on.
“All the bumps in the road have been what’s made me. All the delays when I first started out with my career and my debut [in 2017] being rescheduled a bunch of times and me not having the right management team to start off and then finding magic – the team and the guys and everything built me and built resilience. All the setbacks, all of you guys just saying I’m a white collar guy; I’m not gonna do that well. All of that builds resilience and that’s why when I’m in the ring on the night I don’t care if it’s not going my way. I don’t care if the judges don’t have me up. I believe in me. I know the people around me believe in me and all of that has built resilience for me to come through and it’s all been proven.”
Wardley’s limitations first appeared to have been exposed when in March 2024 he drew with Frazer Clarke in a fight for the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles, but in their rematch little over six months later he then stopped his fellow Englishman inside a round.
Those same limitations appeared evident for nine rounds against Justis Huni in June, before, not unlike against Parker, he stopped the Australian in the 10th. The 33-year-old Parker, similarly, was mostly outboxing Wardley, who was the more tired of the two when he succeeded in transforming the momentum of their contest with his raw power in the 10th round. Pre-fight Parker, who had beaten Martin Bakole, Zhilei Zhang and Deontay Wilder in successive contests, represented, after Usyk, the world’s most in-form heavyweight, but Wardley has inherited his status in the queue to fight the Ukrainian and enhanced his reputation as an entertaining contender who refuses to accept that he can be beaten.
“[The victories over Parker and Huni] were almost similar in a way, weren’t they?” he said. “Individually they’re special for different reasons to me. That Portland Road one [against Huni], not that it’s hard to be topped, but that has a different sense of meaning to it. But I’ve passed the point of knowing. I don’t know anymore. I’m just riding the wave. It’s been a wild ride, wild journey, and there’s nowhere near finished yet. I’ve still got a lot more to do, a lot more I want to take off in the sport, and there’s way more to come.
“I’m sure there’ll be a number of articles, whatever is written up, about how I was seconds away from losing or how I beat Parker but I’m not going to beat Usyk and this and that and whatever else. So, look, I’m not here to please everyone else. I’m here to chase my dream; chase my journey. As long as I go home, my family are happy with me, they love me, they’re proud of me and my team are proud of everything I’ve done, I don’t care. With all due respect I don’t care for what any of you have to say.
“I wasn’t [hurt by Parker]. I don’t want to say that to take away from Joe because it’s not that he’s a soft puncher at all. I just wasn’t hurt. I got caught being lazy. I got caught a bit wrong-footed. I over-committed with some shots and just got caught falling around a bit. But I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t buzzed. You saw the way I came into it in the second round. I didn’t change anything. It wasn’t any different. Sometimes in spaces my work can be a bit sloppy and I get a bit annoyed with myself and let that get to me but I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t buzzed and I was fine. Less experience as well. It’s funny. What am I now? Twenty-one fights in so still learning on the job.
“I was letting shots go and I was doing my best to try not to get too sloppy, but with 11 rounds in I’d already shipped a bunch of punches throughout the fight as well. I was in between staying composed and just letting my hands go, but I thought it was a bit of a now-or-never moment. I knew I probably wasn’t up on the cards, but it didn’t faze me. It didn’t bother me. I didn’t mind that at all. I knew that if I caught him I could keep the gas on; keep the pressure on. I’ve trained extremely hard for this. I’m extremely well conditioned. I knew all I had to do was get my shots off, stay in front of him and just keep landing punches. Maybe the ref could have called it a couple of shots earlier, but we are where we are.”
Both fighters made sacrifices to commit to Saturday’s contest. Parker, 33, was forced to abandon plans to be his brother’s best man at his wedding back in their home country of New Zealand and Wardley, for the first time, had to leave behind the new baby daughter born shortly after his stoppage of Huni.
“It’s a bit of a different life now,” he said. “I’m a dad, so this has been my first week away from my baby so it’s been a weird one. I’ve missed [her and partner Charlotte] tremendously so just looking forward to getting back to them.”
“It’s been ordered,” responded Warren when asked about the possibility of his improving heavyweight fighting the Ukrainian next. He has previously overseen two fights between Usyk and Tyson Fury, and Usyk and Daniel Dubois.
“There’ll be a period for purse negotiation; if we can’t reach an agreement then it will go out for purse bids. I believe we’ll come to an agreement. It won’t be ‘till next year, of course. I think it’ll be sometime in March or something like that.
“I’d love it to be in the UK but there’s only two places where it’ll happen. That’s either going to be in Riyadh [Saudi Arabia] or here and that’s it. You know what you’re getting with Usyk and you know what you’re getting with Fabio. It’s going to be exciting. This fella’s got to be one of the most exciting fighters in the world. Devastating.
“With all the criticism about this being a pay-per-view fight... Should have charged three times the money for it and you wouldn’t have got any complaints from anybody. Can I tell you something about pay-per-view? The reason we have pay-per-view is because fighters expect to get paid a certain amount of money. And if we can’t get a licence fee that gets us near to making the show viable and we’re not getting the government backing us or London backing us – this is not Riyadh – then we have to make it work. And the way you make it work is finding out the true worth for the boxers by pay-per-view. I believed the pay-per-view will do well and the boxers will do well and they should do after that. Unbelievable, epic fight that they put on for everybody.”
