Both Daniel Dubois and Fabio Wardley weighed in at a career heaviest for their WBO heavyweight championship rematch.
London’s Dubois had scaled a career heaviest for their first fight and he topped that at 253.9lbs for Saturday’s rematch while Wardley was 248.3lbs.
Dubois said that means they’re both going for power in this fight. “I’m ready to go, ready for my job,” he told Sky Sports. “I’ll break him down, break him down. Like last time, but better this time.”
The Londoner halted Wardley in a frenetic first fight in May but the former champion excised the rematch clause in his contract in a bid to win back his title.
Wardley is fully expecting the same type of battle. “Knowing it’s going to be a hard, hard fight is what gees me up, what keeps me going,” he told Sky Sports.
“It was well and truly something I came to terms with the second I pressed the button on the rematch clause. We’re probably going back into the same kind of depths.”
At Friday’s weigh-in at Spitalfields Market in the heart of the City of London the two heavyweight rivals finished with a final face off, their last head-to-head encounter before Saturday’s fight.
“I need to get through this to get to bigger things,” Dubois declared. “I’m just ready to do my job on Saturday.
“Just want to go to work now.”
Although Dubois won their first contest, his team insists he retains his singular focus.
His trainer Don Charles told Sky Sports: “Once he’s in that mode, fight mode, he’s in the zone and I love that from him.
“Once Daniel gets a fight date, he’s locked in from that moment. He’s a very intense athlete, intense character, he’s a serious athlete. Everybody’s got their different attributes. That’s one of his strongest attributes.
“He doesn’t have any outside distractions. That’s refreshing.”
Charles added: “We’ve prepared for a better version of Fabio. We have to anticipate for that. Because if you don’t, that would be complacent of us and we don’t have any complacency.”
Fabio Wardley is ready to seek revenge against Daniel Dubois and says he ‘isn’t picky’ about who he faces next if he can topple Dubois.
Both heavyweights appear confident. Promoter Frank Warren told Sky Sports: “That’s the thing about these two guys, so much self-belief the pair of them, they both think they’ve got each other’s number.
“And the one thing they can do, they can both punch and that’s why this fight is going to be so exciting. It’s definitely not going to go the distance.”
Dubois and Wardley have weighed in (Photos: Queensberry/Leigh Dawney)
‘I just want all the belts’
Both men are looking forward to the biggest fights in the division. “It could lead on to unification fights. The landscape of heavyweight boxing is very different from when we had the first fight,” Wardley told Sky Sports.
“The belts have been fragmented, the division’s opened up, there’s multiple world champions which then leads to multiple unification fights.
“Fury-AJ, of course, the winner there, there’s a world title belt on the line there. There’s [WBC titlist Agit] Kabayel, there’s [IBF champion Filip] Hrgovic, I’m not particularly picky.
“I have no personal vendetta against any of these guys. I just want to hold all of them belts.”
