By: Sean Crose
WBC heavyweight titlist Daniel Dubois defended his belt successfully Saturday at London’s O2 Arena. Perhaps “successfully” is an understatement. The truth is that Dubois completely mowed down former world titlist Fabio Wardley in two hard hitting rounds. Sure enough it seemed that Wardley was never in the fight. He got rocked early and never truly recovered. This fight was not like the previous one the two men had which had a back and forth element to it. This one was all Dubois. The man really showed what he was made of. In fact, with Oleksandr Usyk, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua on the downside of their careers, Dubois may be the face of the heavyweight division right now.
“Fabio is a great boy,” Dubois said good naturedly afterwards (via the BBC), “coming in for the second time, but it was my time and my era. I had my intentions, bad intentions from the beginning.” The Englishman was clearly not planning on having a repeat of his first fight with Wardley which went down last spring and which won Dubois the WBO heavyweight title. “My back was against the wall the first time,” he said. “This time we just had to go out there and show that we mean business, which is what we did tonight.”
Several hours later, across the globe in the United States, Sebastian Fundora put his WBC super welterweight title on the line against Ermal Hadribeaj. It was Fundora’s first fight since his brilliant performance against Keith Thurman earlier in the year. As for the challenger Hadribeaj, it was a chance to introduce himself to the world in grand fashion. The bout was scheduled for 12 championship rounds and was the main event of both a DAZN and a TNT broadcast.
If Fondura thought he was in for an easy night he quickly found he was mistaken. Hadribeaj was in Fundora’s face right from the beginning, determined to break down Fundora’s incredible size advantage. Hadribeaj,who looked a bit like Jack Dempsey fighting Jess Willard, gave it 100%. Fudora however is not likely to ever be a man who’s easy to defeat. He met the challenge of Hadribeaj’s aggression and gave it it all himself. By the midpoint of the fight it was hard to tell who it was who would pull out the win. Again, this was no easy night’s work for the defending super welterweight champion.
By the midpoint of the fight however the game and gutsy challenger was starting to gas. He may not have been exhausted but his fight strategy had become less effective. He was still coming forward, still hitting as much as possible, still grappling, but he wasn’t having the impact that he had earlier on Fundora. Losing two points didn’t help Hadribeaj either. Heading into his corner in between the 11th and 12th rounds, Hadribeaj looked an absolute mess. An explosive straight left at the end of the fight right before the bell literally put Hadribeaj on his back. Fundura walked away with his title in his possession and another knockout on his resume.
“I had to kind of go back to my be forginning type of fight,” Fundo admitted afterward. Overall it was a very violent but very exciting day of boxing. The sport really does need more days like this. Dubois, Wardley, Hadribeaj and of course Fundora all deserve a lot of credit for absolutely being ready to go to war in the ring. Hopefully none of the fighters endured too much damage. This is a dangerous sport after all, which is why the men fans saw on Saturday deserve so much respect.
