Fabio Wardley: From white-collar tear-ups to one bout from Usyk

Times

4 days ago

It is barely a ten-minute drive from Trinity Park to Portman Road in Ipswich, but the short distance from a conference hall to a 30,000-seat stadium encapsulates one of British boxing's most unlikely success stories.
In 2016, Fabio Wardley was working as a recruitment consultant in London for health and social workers, commuting by train at dawn and dusk, and had what could only be described as a passing interest in boxing. Once a striker in Ipswich Town's academy, he only took up the sport as a means of staying fit after an ankle injury ended his Sunday league career in his early twenties. His first white-collar bout, a form of amateur boxing for novices working in other professions, was nothing more than a vehicle to fill the athletic void.
'Some people think it is just two fat guys who've rolled out of the pub,' Wardley says. 'It's hard to explain white-collar because the levels can be really low or quite high, but it's basically two normal people having a boxing match. No one is trying to turn it into a serious sport. Half of the time it is just to raise money for charity. I was just training and doing it for fun.'
The four opponents Wardley — who is 6ft 5in and 110kg — faced in white-collar bouts, all of which he won by knockout, must look back now with a mixture of pride and horror. 'I am 5ft 7in and 100kg, I had no business competing at heavyweight,' Eric Sutton, one of the unfortunate victims, said last year after Wardley stopped Frazer Clarke, an Olympic bronze medallist. 'I took it at the last minute, had a car crash on the way up there and it was over in two rounds.'
Undefeated in 18 fights since turning professional in 2017, Wardley, a British and Commonwealth champion, will be next in line for a world title shot if he can beat Australia's Justis Huni, another decorated amateur, on Saturday. 'When I turned professional, I just thought I'd have a few fights and if I could win any kind of [regional or national] belt in my career, I'd be happy to have something decent to look back on,' he says. 'I wasn't supposed to be achieving these kinds of things.
Wardley says his first, drawn, bout with Clarke took years off him while leaving him with a broken nose
'I fought at the O2, then I headlined the O2, I've fought in Saudi Arabia as the chief support to Tyson Fury and to Artur Beterbiev vs Dmitry Bivol. It keeps feeling like we've peaked and that it can't get any better and now I'm fighting at the stadium in my hometown. I'm genuinely on the edge of a world title, which sounds crazy for me just to say.'
Boxers often tap into football fanbases but Wardley has become something of a celebrity in Ipswich, where he has lived all of his life. He grew up on a council estate with his mother and stepfather and attended the local Chantry High School. A mischievous child, he had the bare essentials and borrowed last season's football kits from his older cousins. 'I would never say I had a bad childhood,' he says. 'It wasn't the most flash, glitz and glam. The material stuff may have been missing but the family presence was always there.'
Wardley is warm company and unashamedly shows off a small tattoo of a teapot with a love heart on the inside of his left wrist, a reminder of when the Covid restrictions eased and his family would meet for 'tea parties' on Sundays. 'My cousins, my mum, my aunties, my nan, we've all got the tattoo,' he says.
Wardley was in Ipswich's academy for about a year in his early teens but started getting into trouble after he was released and was referred to Suffolk Positive Futures, an initiative to divert young people from crime. One of the mentors was Robert Hodgins, a boxing coach who Wardley later reunited with for his first white-collar bout and who has remained a key part of his training team ever since. After the fourth of his amateur bouts, a boxing manager persuaded the then 22-year-old Wardley to turn professional, but he almost gave up before his career had even begun.
'My debut was cancelled seven or eight times over a year. Opponents pulled out or didn't turn up. Once I was literally in the changing room five minutes from walking out with my hands wrapped and there was an issue with a medical form. Rob said, 'Look mate, it's been a rough ride, no one would begrudge you for saying I've had enough of this'.
'I was coming into the gym at 6am, then I'd get the 7.30am train to London, get the 5.30pm train home, and be back in the gym for 7.30pm to do my second session for months and months. I knew I'd always kick myself if I felt like I quit, but it was quite humiliating because I'm asking all my friends and family to buy tickets. The first two or three times it's cancelled they're like 'OK, no worries'. When it comes to six and seven, people are like, 'Are you taking the piss?' It almost became a running joke, but having to deal with all of that built up a certain amount of resilience.'
The turning point came in 2018 when Wardley was invited to spar with Dillian Whyte and the former title challenger decided to take Wardley under his wing and guide his career. A few months later, Wardley was given a slot on the undercard of Whyte's rematch against Alexander Povetkin at the O2 Arena. He was also invited to spar with Oleksandr Usyk, who was preparing to face Tony Bellew for the undisputed cruiserweight title, in Kyiv.
'I got this message on Facebook in broken English and at first I thought it might be a scam,' he says. 'I was confused as to why I'd even be on Usyk's radar. I'd left my job in London to focus on my career and I was working part-time in a commercial gym. I asked them for three weeks off and they said no, so I left. I flew to Ukraine and a driver had a sign with my name on it. He didn't speak a lick of English and I got into this stranger's white van and I thought, 'I don't know if I'm making it home', but then I met his team and they were all really nice. I was extremely green. I didn't know the scale of Usyk's skill. To even lay a glove on him was really difficult. I think I got something like £750 per week.'
It is a mark of Wardley's remarkable progress that a win over Huni would make him the No1 contender for Usyk's WBO title, but that still felt a bridge too far as recently as Wardley's first bout against Clarke in March 2024, a compelling, brutal draw which was named fight of the year. 'It definitely took years off my life,' Wardley says. His broken nose left blood splattered all over the canvas
'It's a fate that you have to accept if you do this sport properly. I probably should've gone to the hospital afterwards. I remember being sat in my hotel room and I couldn't sleep because my head was pounding, like vibrating. When I lay down, I felt sick. If I sat up, I felt sick. My face looked like the Elephant Man. My nose was stitched up. I'd bitten my tongue about 100 times. I couldn't chew for three days because of my jaw, so I just ate ice cream and noodles, but that's part of it. Those fights are going to happen and you might get knocked out, but if you carry that around with you and hesitate because you're scared of it, it could have a negative impact on how you fight and almost make it more likely to happen. You've got to just take it on the chin.'
Wardley's spectacular — and sickening — first-round knockout in the rematch last October was not just a testament to that mindset but dispelled the notion that his shortage in experience would prevent him from becoming a bona fide contender. 'Huni is another opponent from a completely different end of entry in boxing terms,' he says of the 26-year-old, who won gold at the World Youth Championships in 2016, the year Wardley first graced Trinity Park. 'After starting in white-collar, anything was a win. This wasn't realistic, but you always imagine.'