Where there's a will there's a way Proverb
As a thick snake of blood oozed from a cut on Fabio Wardley’s busted nose, punches smeared and splattered it across his brow and cheek. His teeth grinding into his mouth piece beneath. A giant, visible to Wardley through a mask of warm claret, lumbered closer, the possessor of greater experience, heft and the initiative. The Ipswich man grimaced but chose to walk forward. Toward the tumult. Where many would hold or fold, Wardley elected to fight. Not to box, but to fight. In that distinction, in Wardley’s willingness to risk when vulnerable and hurt, the British Heavyweight title, with all its abundant history, was won.
Gorman proved unable to match or repel Wardley’s spirited response to the success he’d enjoyed in the first round and fell to defeat in the third. The white towel of surrender fluttering on to the canvas to confirm the fighter’s shallower resistance was spent. By then, Gorman had been on the floor twice in the second and once in the third.
Wardley’s youthful combination of flaws and enterprise suggest many equally entertaining nights lay ahead.
In a world of excess and dubious financing, among the gluttony of sanctioning bodies and their debasement of the term champion, the British title is always a restorative elixir for the forlorn boxing fan. At the Wembley Arena on Saturday night, Wardley’s demolition of rival Nathan Gorman demonstrated the value of the Lonsdale belt in matching fighters and the determination they show in its pursuit.
Both fighters arrived as anomalies in the domestic heavyweight division in entirely divergent ways. Gorman; big, bald and round, with hands quicker than his physique suggests and Wardley; the former white collar fighter, with an appetite for a scrap. Despite this lack of convention and the triumph and despair they shared on Saturday, they both remain important men.
Wardley won and proved much in doing so. Cynics will conclude this is as far as he goes, if Gorman can hurt him early, better, more durable men will do so too they will suggest. Optimists will believe there is potential as yet unfurled and Wardley will be wiser and better for this encounter. There is merit in both perspectives.
Where Gorman goes from here is harder to predict. He has talent, but the weight he’s boxing at strikes this observer as too high. He is a big, fleshy heavyweight in the mould of John McDermott before him, who was a contentious decision away from beating Tyson Fury a decade ago. Like Big John, Gorman will never be sculptured. But 271 pounds is a lot of excess. Perhaps encouraged by Fury’s own adoption of a higher weight, Gorman came to this fight with 20 pounds of extra luggage he didn’t take to fights with Daniel Dubois or Kevin Johnson in 2019 when still unbeaten. It may be important, it may not.
Gorman’s response to crisis remains unchanged. Wardley evidently has power but at no point did the 26-year-old seem disconnected from his faculties. He appeared too willing to fold once the punches began to land. Wardley, by contrast, remained stubbornly unyielding. In a fire fight, which Wardley made it once he was hurt in the first, and buzzed at the start of the second, that can often be the difference between winning and losing.
Wardley will be an interesting champion. With Frazer Clarke, if he chooses the route, David Adeleye and perhaps, the ticket seller Johnny Fisher and Kash Ali jostling behind him there is scope for entertaining fights in 2023.
However his future unfolds, Fabio Wardley will one day sit in life’s eternal armchair, his grand children at his knee, and be able to tell them he was, a long, long time ago, after Henry Cooper and Tyson Fury, and before names as yet unknown, the Heavyweight Champion of Great Britain.
Timeless. Priceless.
BOXINGWRITER.CO.UK 
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