Frazer Clarke ahead of heavyweight showdown: Fabio Wardley’s not the same. This is what I breathe. This is what I love. | Boxing News

“I feel it in my blood, I feel it in my bones.”

“I can’t wait to hit something.” Frazer Clarke likes this. Given the extremes to which both Clarke and Fabio Wardley went in their first bout, either could be forgiven for not scoring against each other.

But Wardley and Clarke are not so reported. After a virtual stoppage over 12 rounds in March and a massive draw, they are fiercely determined to go again and finally find a winner.

There was never any question for Clark that this second fight, for all the brutality of the first, was exactly what he wanted.

“Boxing for me is not what I think, it’s not what I do, it’s what I feel,” he said. Sky Sports.

“It’s so ingrained in me. I love sports. I love the athletic aspect of both men getting in the ring and trying to outdo each other.

“I’m thinking of going out there and walking out the new British champion with a big smile on my face and being proud of myself, the work I’ve put in over the years and doing myself justice.”

He believes this sets him apart from his competition.

“I’m not sure he has the same passion for boxing as I do,” Clarke said of Wardley. “I think he has a passion for being popular and famous and having a few quid in his pocket.

“Take me away, take everything from me, you will never take away the love I have for this sport. I am not sure that he is the same person.

“He loves sports, but that’s because it’s the sport he’s good at. It’s a job for him. It’s a cliché for me to say that, but it’s so much more than that.

“This is my life, this is what I live, this is what I breathe, this is what I love.

“Me and him, I think we’re different people.”

Although both refused to back down in their epic first fight. In his white collar boxing past, in his professional career, Wardley has never lost.

“I’m still undefeated across the board,” he said Sky Sports. “I haven’t been beaten hard yet and I think if nothing else comes out of that draw, it’s given me a lot more admiration, respect and praise in the boxing community to go 12 rounds like that.

“I am a competitor and I want to win. I want to get the W, but that fight didn’t hurt my credit either.”

In Clark’s long and highly successful amateur career, he naturally suffered defeats along the way. Wardley thinks his opponent knows how to lose, somehow he doesn’t.

“When you start losing and losing fights, you see the signs, you almost start having flashbacks in the middle of the fight, ‘this is where it went wrong when I lost’… It starts playing in your mind. “I’ve always doubted how strong Fraser Clarke is, I know how much the outside world can affect him,” Wardley said.

“His brain can hit him, too. I don’t let myself in. I can take a little breather for five seconds and walk away for a second, but as soon as I pull back it’s straight back to war. I don’t know how to stop.

“I don’t know how to quit smoking and it might hurt me one day. But at the end of the day, that’s my fighting style, that’s how I do it and how I’m going to continue.

His prediction. “A little less blood and a lot more war.

“At least from me.”

Gloves dispute

There is a fierce rivalry between the two heavyweights and it spilled over when their respective teams argued over the gloves the day before the fight.

Michael Offo, from Wardley’s management team, said Sky Sports“I was happy with our gloves, I was happy with their gloves. I left the room (meeting). As soon as something said to me, go back to the room, I don’t know why, I went back. in and they brought our gloves out with the British Council and they were complaining about the gloves.

“They should not touch our gloves without our presence.

“The British Council told them there’s nothing wrong with the gloves, the gloves are great…Both teams were just going back and forth.”

Angel Fernandez, Clark’s coach, said. “We felt the gloves didn’t have enough padding. But it’s not a big deal, I don’t know why they’re making a fuss about it. They don’t fight that.”

Power or pace?

Wardley shaved off some pounds for this second fight, while Clark weighed in heavier than he did the first time around.

It has been questioned. Former world champion Johnny Nelson said. “It really surprises me.

“Do you think I’ll put on more weight so I have more power in my kick so I can push and lean on you more? I don’t know.

“If I were to work with Fraser on this, I would work on pace, to work on consistent pace and increase it. You know what you need to improve on, you have the intelligence to adapt to it.

“For Fabio, he now knows he can go hard for 12 rounds and he knows he can hurt Fraser Clarke. As for Fraser, I’m just surprised he’s overwhelmed. crazy, but he’ll probably tell us after the fight.”

However, Friday’s weigh-in in Riyadh took place later in the day than the first meeting in March, so it’s not an exact equivalent.

Clarke has apparently taken himself to a new level in training for this fight.

“It’s designed to make you better, but it’s also designed to break you,” he said Sky Sports. “All this is aimed at one thing, and that is to implement a plan and a performance on March night.

“It’s pretty amazing what you learn about yourself and what you learn about life at a boxing boot camp.”

That, combined with a determination to change the outcome of the first fight, leaves him completely determined.

“I was devastated (at the draw). Because I’m a winner. I’m not here to participate,” Clark said.

“We have a chance to make things right and I’m going to do it.

“It’s almost sad, but I am who I am and the sport has made me who I am today, and like everyone in this room, everyone who’s going to come and watch, the passion that I have for this sport , I can’t really represent. in those words.

“I am ready to go to work.”

Fabio Wardley’s massive rematch with Fraser Clarke will take place on the epic Arthur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol bill on October 12th. to live Sky Sports box office. Book Wardley vs Clarke 2 and Beterbiev vs Bivol now!