Britain has been blessed with a litany of heavyweight contenders over the past decade, and Saturday night at the O2 added another to that list.
Ipswich based 30yr old Fabio Wardley defeated former world champion and division mainstay Joseph Parker via stoppage in London’s famous O2 arena to claim his WBO-interim championship. What made this matchup particularly intriguing is the fact that in 2016, the year Joseph Parker captured the heavyweight championship, Fabio Wardley was fighting in unsanctioned white collar fights.
A few white collars later, with no amateur bouts and having started boxing at the late age of 20, he would turn pro in 2017 while Parker was a reigning world champion. 8 years later, the two would meet as a PPV headliner in London’s O2 arena, with Wardley triumphing over the 33 year old veteran with an emphatic stoppage.
The stakes? On top of Parker’s WBO-interim belt was his mandatory status for the undisputed champion and division kingpin, Oleksandr Usyk. The Ukrainian himself confirmed before fight week that his aim was to fight the winner of the Queensberry headliner. Whilst fans have campaigned hard for Parker, who had been on a stellar run of victories to get his more than deserved shot, he ultimately chose to face the Brit Fabio Wardley while Usyk decided to delay his return to the ring until 2026.
What a choice, and what a fight it would result in. A back and forth tussle where both men seemed on the verge of victory on multiple occasions. Wardley came close to a knockdown in the 2nd round, while Joseph Parker took over in the mid rounds before coming close to making a breakthrough himself in the 9th. The Ipswich man would respond in kind in the 10th where he once again came within a few punches, only for the ending to come one round later as referee Howard Foster halted the contest in the 11th.
Howard Foster has had numerous controversies in his time as an A-star referee, most notably his premature stoppage of George Groves in his first bout with Carl Froch in 2013. While Parker had not been knocked down up to this point, it is worth noting that in the 30 seconds prior to the stoppage, Wardley had thrown around 50 punches, with more than 30 of them landing. Parker had thrown less than 5. A harsh reaction to the official decision would follow online.
From where I was sitting ringside, I felt a few more seconds could have been warranted, however from that same position I could see Parker’s trainer (and former world champion) Andy Lee climb up onto the canvas, where he didn’t seem to have much of an issue with the stoppage – a sentiment he would confirm in the post fight press conference.
Where Joseph Parker goes from here seems uncertain. The Kiwi has been through tough fights with basically the entire heavyweight division; Fabio Wardley, Zhilei Zhang, Deontay Wilder, Joe Joyce, Dillian Whyte, Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz to name a few. He’s been operating at or around world level for almost a decade, but what route he should take now will take some time to appear.
For Wardley however, the next step seemed obvious to the fans and to Wardley himself. Immediately after his victory he began calling Oleksandr Usyk’s name. While the consensus on an Oleksandr Usyk vs Fabio Wardley matchup will likely be based around a ‘difference in class’, I look to quote Frank Warren who posed a similar point; ‘correct me if I’m wrong, he can’t do that (knock-out) to Parker according to the bookmakers. He can’t do it to anyone… but he keeps fuc*ing doing it.’
Undercard action
Early in the night saw routine points decisions for Anton Esson, Jimmydean Wood and George Crotty, with two exceptions being an interesting knockdown scored against Zayn Ahmed in his pro debut. Just as he looked to get his opponent going in the 4th, he was clocked by a great counter shot, but ultimately went on to win via pts. Hassan Ishaq got an impressive stoppage over 100 fight veteran Jakey Pollard. I have seen Pollard fight numerous times and never expected to see him get taken apart in such fashion.
PPV undercard
Mitchell Smith looked to resurrect a once promising career against Arnie Dawson and began that resurrection with a bang as he floored his undefeated opponent at the very end of the first round. Smith looked predatory as he patiently stalked the Essex fighter while he found his mark throughout the next round, and while Smith controlled the lion share of the rounds, Dawson would remind the Londoner not to get carried away as he hurt Smith at the end of the 3rd and 6th rounds. A strong showing from Smith in the 10th round secured him a UD victory.
Royston-Barney-Smith cruised to a unanimous decision win in his first step up to 10 rounds against the fellow undefeated Danny Quartermaine. Slick backfoot counters from RBS’ southpaw stance were a delight to watch throughout. Davison’s corner’s calls for the ref to intervene with Quartermaine’s habit of leading with his head were highly audible from ringside.
Also noticeable from ringside was the unusually lowkey entrance of recently ‘retired’ heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, a keen admirer of the Southampton super-featherweight. Minutes later, WBC interim champion Agit Kabayel and former IBF champ Daniel Dubois also took their seats ringside. With young phenom Moses Itauma also in attendance, it looked like we might have almost half of the top 10 heavyweights present in London.
Next up another undefeated contender, this time at light-heavyweight, had to dispose of a late-replacement opponent in Steed Woodall. With the disappointment of British Champion Lewie Edmonson’s pull-out a week before fight night, Ezra Taylor managed to keep his slot on the card in a meaningful fight, just not for the coveted Lonsdale belt.
Woodall wasn’t completely out of shape, in fact he had been preparing for a bout just two weeks later on GBM’s 8 man super-middleweight tournament in Hull. But the late opportunity at the O2 came calling and Woodall proved his worth in the opening rounds. However Taylor’s size and his jab in particular began to shut down any early success for Woodall, with Ezra’s length and precision showing more and more as the rounds went on.
A dominant 6th for Taylor proved to be a turning point, with Woodall failing to gain a foothold from that point. Woodall’s corner deemed their own man unfit to continue as Taylor unleashed a deadly combo in the 9th round. While the British title shot is surely next for the Nottingham based light-heavy, at age 31 ‘The Cannon’ must look to advance quickly in a thriving domestic division.
As for the co-main event, there isn’t much to ‘digest’ here. Both Juergen Uldedaj and Rolly Fogoum failed to get out of first gear. What might have been a sleeper scrap between two international fighters turned out to be a sleeper in other less desirable ways. Brief rallies from Uldedaj in the 9th and 11th got the several thousand Albanian fans going, but it was not enough to sustain his forgettable 12 round points win for the IBO title.
The Main Event – Joseph Parker vs Fabio Wardley
Thankfully some thunderous ringwalks would follow, with ringside representing more of a comic-con of boxing stars rather than anything else. Fury, Okolie, Itauma, Dubois, Kabayel, Miller, Sheeraz, Wood and probably a dozen more big names were sat for what some had dubbed the ‘fight for the right’ at the aforementioned Undisputed Heavyweight champion.
The usual feeling out process of the first round ended with a flurry from Parker, putting Wardley against the ropes and exerting enough pressure to surely win him the round. This would be reversed by the 2nd round, where the Ipswich fighter bamboozled Joseph Parker and seemed on the verge of a knockdown before Parker had to have his gumshield reinserted.
As the rounds followed, Parker would try to find a home for his single and double jab, but the eye-catching work was typically an overhand right by Wardley, and whether it landed on the gloves or flesh, it sparked a reaction from both Parker and the O2 crowd. By the mid rounds it had become a battle of the jabs, which doesn’t properly describe how absorbing the contest was becoming.
Fabios’ stab to the body proved effective. But as we entered round 8, Wardley began to look tired, and Parker also seemed fatigued after a rally in the 9th, which Wardley capitalised on with a near fight-ending sequence in the 10th. I’m not one for ‘I told you so’ sentiments, but when this fight was announced I fancied Fabio Wardley heavily. His emphatic stoppage over Justis Huni proved he could be deadly in the latter stages of a fight, and his even more devastating KO of fellow Brit Frazer Clarke a few months earlier proved he was just as deadly early on.
This is a rare level of dangerosity and when Parker came in at a whopping 262lbs, a whole stone and a half heavier than he was for his stellar performances against Zhang and Wilder… I thought Parker’s gastank was going to suffer. After his rally in the 9th, Parker had his hands by his hips seeking respite for the remainder of the round, and I thought to myself ‘this could be it’. A round and a half later Wardley had made his mark, and one round after that, it was all over.
Many notable names in and around the sport maligned the stoppage, however I feel it was clear that Parker was never going to come back and win the fight. Howard Foster has had a reputation for stopping fights too early for some time now, it was in the same arena where I watched him stop American Michael Coffie when Wardley had him on the ropes during their fight in April 2023- and Foster received similar complaints back then. Surely Parker was on his way to getting stopped, likely in quite brutal fashion? Almost certainly… almost.
