Daniel Dubois and Fabio Wardley are going to that darkish place again

In most abusive and traumatic relationships, we implore the individual broken to get out and never go back. Only in this method, by creating and sustaining distance, can the sufferer/survivor hope to course of loss and break the trauma bond determined to return them to that same place of ache and damage. Only in this method will their buddies be spared from listening to them one day say, “No, it’s OK. It will be different this time.”

In boxing, where trauma is the goal, we are less inclined to keep human beings protected from hurt. In reality, whenever we see a bloody and dramatic battle, our intuition is to clap our palms and beg for more. Often, with the two boxers still standing in the ring, drained and not yet cleaned, we will pay attention as they reply questions not only about the previous — what has just transpired — but future battles, too. We want to see them requested about the next one and, if required, given the megaphone and platform to problem a callout. We need to know if they would think about, for our leisure, doing a rematch, stopping short of chanting, “Do it! Do it! Do it!” Most of the time we overlook to even say please. We just expect it.

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Sometimes a boxer’s “yes” will be a reflex motion, like the snap of a jab, whereas other instances there is a higher sense of them having been cajoled; their jabbing arm twisted behind their back. Either method, if followers need to see it, and the promoter is keen to pay for it, a rematch tends to be boxing’s tried and examined trauma response. It is, for higher or worse, just that variety of recreation. Rather than run from ache, there is money to be made in revisiting the cause of it and discovering catharsis in repetition. 

Boxing’s next notable rematch takes place this Saturday in London, where British heavyweights Daniel Dubois and Fabio Wardley conflict again for the WBO heavyweight title. This is a repeat of their battle in May, which ended with Dubois, the challenger, stopping Wardley, the champion, in the Eleventh spherical of what was arguably the best battle of the 12 months. 

As if that first offering — a conclusive stoppage in a grueling affair — was neither violent nor bloody enough to sate us, we were all fast to demand more. We saw the mess Dubois’ fists had made of Wardley’s face, yet our collective concern for the overwhelmed man lasted only as long as it took a cutman to wipe away the blood with a towel and a ringside physician to enable him to stagger back to his toes. After that, we were permitted to once more see Wardley not as a human being but a fighter, a machine, an entertainer. By the time Dubois was asking us, “Are you not entertained?”, we had began to marvel what he and Wardley would do next. We requested ourselves, “Would it be different next time?”

That brutal first encounter between the pair was billed as “Don’t Blink,” which teased something temporary, and early on it was plain to see why. In reality, when Wardley dropped Dubois with his first correct punch — a proper hand in Round 1 — it was onerous to think about the battle being anything but temporary; typically the actuality of fights between heavyweight punchers. When Wardley then repeated the trick in Round 3, flooring Dubois for a second time, the battle appeared as good as over, with the same true of their rivalry. 

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Yet Dubois, no stranger to adversity, had other concepts. “Just a war,” he says now, whenever pushed to recall the occasions of battle one, and that is indeed what it grew to become. It grew to become a conflict on account of both Dubois’ cussed refusal to keep down and his equally spectacular capability to control Wardley with his jab and energy pictures before forcing his method into a place of dominance during the center rounds. By the battle’s second half, it was really Dubois and not Wardley who was the one doing most of the harm. By then, so extreme was the harm executed to Wardley, the story and message of the battle had modified. Now the advice to not blink had been changed by a suggestion to watch through fingers, or look away utterly. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, a battle that a few minutes in the past was a must-watch grew to become a battle onerous to watch through Rounds 10 and 11. 

For Wardley’s sake, and our own, we willed it to finish. We needed someone, either the referee or a cornerman, to take charge and take away that growing feeling of discomfort. We needed Wardley to be saved both from Dubois and himself. 

Of course, when he finally was, everything was OK again. Better yet, the second we saw Wardley ruefully smile and embrace Dubois, we were again ready to extract our feelings from the spectacle and faucet back into the detachment of the bloodthirsty. Saved he might have been, but only for another day. 

Frank Warren, the man accountable for bringing them collectively, called it the best heavyweight battle he had ever promoted. Then, once knowledgeable that the DAZN viewers watching at home had voted to see an rapid rematch, he said in the ring, “There is a rematch clause in the contract …” and left it there. We knew, given the context, precisely what that ellipsis meant. 

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As for Wardley, the one who exited the ring wanting completely different than how he entered, there was never any doubt he would need to do it again. Aside from the reality he had dropped Dubois twice, and appeared on the brink of profitable at one stage, Wardley also has historical past when it comes to rapid rematches and corrections. Back in 2024, for occasion, he renewed hostilities with Frazer Clarke just six and a half months after battling to a 12-round draw with the one-time Olympian in London. That first Clarke battle was an arduous, bloody battle, the variety seemingly to steal years from the two fighters concerned, and perhaps it was for that cause Wardley needed a thirteenth spherical sooner rather than later. Or possibly he had realized something from those initial 12 rounds and now could not wait to repair his errors in a rematch. 

Whatever the impetus for Wardley, he renewed acquaintances with Clarke in Saudi Arabia and this time stopped Clarke inside the very first spherical, a consequence nobody, not even Wardley, could have predicted. Shocking enough in isolation, the win was made all the more stunning by advantage of it having adopted such a aggressive first assembly between the pair earlier that 12 months.

Wardley’s hope now is that something comparable will unfold when he reconnects with Dubois this Saturday. “I definitely made some mistakes — evidently more than him, because he won the fight,” Wardley (20-1, 19 KOs) said of his May battle with Dubois. “I think mine are very much clear and obvious for me to fix and change. I also have a proven record of being able to do that as well — going into a rematch with the same opponent. Except from the first Frazer Clarke fight, I came away with a draw. In this fight [against Dubois], I came away with a loss. But you just go back to the drawing back, assess, have a look at yourself and change it around.”

True as it is that the loser of a battle seldom has to look far or onerous for methods to improve, Dubois, the victor, will be just as keen to work on the errors he made in battle one. After all, while the consequence itself was spectacular, and the efficiency too, there were enough errors and knockdowns suffered for Dubois to view a rematch with Wardley as more than just a case of going over previous ground. 

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“I’m going to come in as champion and just demonstrate my skill and pedigree,” said Dubois (23-3, 22 KOs). “I’ve got to put things right this time and be sharp off the mark, more precise, and take him out in style. Just raise my level now and break him down again.”

Twenty-five years in the past, another British heavyweight, Lennox Lewis, managed to both lose and regain his world heavyweight titles in the space of seven months. His opponent and nemesis was Hasim “The Rock” Rahman, a top-10 contender few expected to be aggressive, never thoughts dethrone Lewis. Yet, with a single proper hand thrown inside a ring in Brakpan, South Africa, that is exactly what Rahman did. 

More than just an upset, what occurred in Carnival City that April was seen as an aberration, a cautionary story; a reminder that a champion should never take a challenger flippantly, particularly at heavyweight, and that underdogs sometimes have their day. One look at Lewis and you could inform that he wasn’t proper, they said. But why? Some, post-fight, believed it was the altitude and his failure to acclimatize that made him seem lazy and torpid and unable to raise his left glove to block proper palms, while others pointed to him juggling coaching with taking pictures scenes for the new “Ocean’s Eleven” movie as a sure-fire signal of a champion slipping toward complacency.

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In the finish, though, it did not matter how or why it had occurred. It just needed correcting — hence the rematch, seven months later.

That evening, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Lewis slept in the altering room prior to the battle and woke from his slumber with a seriousness he clearly lacked in South Africa. There was a renewed confidence, too, something that could perhaps be attributed to Lewis realizing his battery was only half-charged for battle one. Of course, had Rahman overwhelmed him at his best, this mindset, as nicely as the velocity with which he rematched Rahman, might have been very completely different. But because Rahman hadn’t overwhelmed the best model of Lewis, the feeling going into battle two was one of urgency, severity, and function. One could see that in the method Lewis maneuvered around Rahman early on and peppered him with his long, snappy left jab, as if to tame and educate him, put him back in his place. It then grew to become abundantly clear in the method Lewis set up and dedicated to the proper hand with which he poleaxed Rahman in Round 4. 

“I just stayed focused,” said Lewis in the ring afterward. “When we were in South Africa, I said the belts were on loan. He’s had his 15 minutes of glory and now they’ve come back home to me.”

“Do you now acknowledge that you didn’t take him seriously in South Africa?” requested HBO’s Larry Merchant.

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“Well, you know, I didn’t take him seriously enough,” said Lewis. “I was in good shape in Africa but he got through with one punch when I was a little not focused. We’re in the heavyweight business. You can end things with one punch.”

For other heavyweights, chasing an rapid rematch is sometimes a tougher call to make. Take Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, for instance, who both had to determine whether it was smart to battle Oleksandr Usyk again having been soundly overwhelmed by him the first time they met. In both situations the rematches took place, yet the outcomes, as most expected, were nearly an identical. In the case of Joshua, his September 2021 factors loss to Usyk was adopted by another August 2022 factors loss, while Fury, outpointed by Usyk in May and December of 2024, had even less time between his defeats, not that it mattered. Fury, like Joshua before him, may have had temporary intervals of success against Usyk, but never was there any sense that he wasn’t for the most half being managed by the great Ukrainian and, finally, taught a lesson. 

Which, I suppose, begs the query: Why put yourself through the same ordeal twice? Hope is one factor — only natural — but there was at the time no indication that Usyk’s first win against Joshua and Fury was a fluke, a theft, or a one-punch disaster. Instead, Usyk beat them the method he beats all his opponents: By exposing their technical limitations and taking their perception and their hope. 

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That said, Fury and Joshua are two proud champions with histories of success in rapid rematches. You might recall how Fury, as WBC champion, adopted a seventh-round stoppage of Deontay Wilder in February 2020 with an Eleventh-round stoppage of the same opponent in October 2021. Joshua, on the other hand, was even more spectacular in how he erased his stunning sixth-round loss to Andy Ruiz in June 2019 with a revenge win just six months later. 

“Last time I realized I hurt the man and I got caught coming in,” said Joshua, having snatched his WBA, IBF and WBO belts back from Ruiz in Saudi Arabia. “I gave the man his credit. No excuses, right? But I said to myself that I would correct myself and come again. I just wanted to put on a great boxing masterclass and also show the sweet science of this lovely sport. It’s about hitting and not getting hit.”

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Though only six months had handed, the change in method was clear for all to see. In Joshua, we saw a heavyweight carrying the trauma of battle one in both his type and the focus in his eyes. We got from him a far more cautious and at instances destructive show in Diriyah, but one that was also good and right and largely accountable for him exacting revenge that evening. 

Ruiz, meanwhile, also carried the ghosts of battle one into his efficiency. If before, in New York, the American’s braveness and energy came as a shock to Joshua, now Ruiz had to attempt something else, which, we found, was beyond his capabilities. Moreover, in the six months between fights one and two, Ruiz had, like Hasim Rahman 25 years in the past, walked like a champion, talked like a champion, and indulged like a champion, making certain he was now twice the man but half the fighter he used to be. Now the job of rediscovering the starvation of a challenger was nearly not possible for Ruiz to obtain. 

When Daniel Dubois suffered the first loss of his skilled profession, against Joe Joyce in November 2020, he did two shrewd issues. One, he stayed down in Round 10 when in hazard of dropping his sight due to a damaged eye socket, and two, he soaked up the post-fight criticism and waited for the second to move. Which is to say, despite all his anger and frustration, Dubois resisted the temptation to rematch Joyce — an older, more skilled, harder man — in the faint hope that he could overturn the loss and silence his critics. 

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Instead, he licked his wounds, made peace with the setback, and continued on his own path. In doing so Dubois reminded us that sometimes a boxer refusing a rematch can be as important to their development as agreeing to one, and that not every “war” or painful defeat must be adopted with a repeat prescription. As it is in life, maturity in boxing is so typically outlined by strolling away and saying no. Indeed, one need only think about how Dubois surpassed Joyce, his conqueror, in profession phrases to see the benefit of persistence, stable matchmaking, and coming to phrases with failure. 

No doubt Fabio Wardley, his next opponent, will have skilled the same quandary after dropping for the first time as a professional back in May. And yet, whereas Dubois opted to tuck his tail and swallow his delight six years in the past, Wardley has determined to return to that same darkish place, believing himself to be healed, prepared for it. He might without end put on the mementos of battle on his face — the scar tissue around the bridge of his nostril, for starters — but he can, for now at least, acknowledge the distinction between floor harm and something deeper. 

“I triggered the rematch clause as soon as I could,” said Wardley, who admits he was “trigger happy” and a “victim of his own success” in battle one. “I think a lot has been made of the aesthetic, how it looked, but ultimately, on the face of it, it’s a boxing match between two big heavyweights. You’re probably going to come out with a bruise, a cut or two. I think a bit of a meal was made of it really. This [taking a rematch] is nothing new to me. By no means do I expect to get through this sport unscathed. Not many do.”

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“He can’t do anything different,” said a straight-faced Dubois in response. “He can’t change his style. He’ll come out, try hard again, but I’ll have an answer for him.”

Implicit in the time period “immediate rematch” is a suggestion that questions have yet to be answered. Generally talking: Will the upset be corrected? Will the judges get the scorecards proper this time? Can Fighter A alter his type and shock Fighter B? 

But then you get a rematch like Dubois-Wardley 2, which seems not so much involved with unanswered questions as merely prolonging the drama and uncertainty of 5 months in the past. Rather than solutions, we, the viewers, just need more of the same — more twists and turns, more punches, more blood, more harm. Like last time, we need more causes to watch and more causes to look away. In reality, we expect it.