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This weekend’s WBA World Featherweight title bout between current champion Leigh Wood, 27-3 (16ko) and former IBF title holder Josh Warrington 31-2 (8ko) at the Sheffield Arena is one rich in competitive promise.
Flawed and feisty, the pair share much but arrive in Sheffield in wildly divergent form.
In any other era, the two protagonists would be regarded as veterans. Fighters in their thirties, particularly in the Featherweight division are not improving, nor, typically able to reach the heights of their twenties. At 35, Wood has acknowledged that this and perhaps one more fight are the last hurrahs of a professional career that began 12 years ago. The Clifton Leisure Centre provided the inauspicious back drop for his debut and for a long time it appeared unlikely Wood would soar much beyond those modest surroundings.
As recently as 2020, Wood lost over 10 rounds to Jazza Dickins, the culmination of a long rebuild from a stoppage defeat to Gavin McDonnell in 2014. Only the most optimistic could have conjured the Indian Summer the Nottingham man has enjoyed since.
Can Warrington reverse his apparent decline?
For Warrington, now 32, and clinging on to the slippery slope that waits for all fighters, his peak came much earlier, the zenith a pitiless, unrelenting triumph over Carl Frampton in 2018. Saturday’s fight is five years removed from that night and Warrington’s form has been eroding since.
It is this decline and the unexpected form of Wood, that leads to Warrington’s underdog status. Widely available at 2/1 for the outright win, the Leeds man will be motivated, perhaps refreshed from a 10-month lay off and aware this is his final opportunity to add lustre to an otherwise frustrating conclusion to his career. His style would be undervalued by a busy, volume puncher description. He is cuter and more varied but his recent opponents; Mauricio Lara and Luis Alberto Lopez were harder punching, younger, fresher and most significant of all, awkward and unpredictable.
Within those performances Warrington’s self-belief appeared to wilt, in the face of heavy shots thrown from unconventional angles. The proud Leeds man had no answers and although the record shows a MD12 loss to Lopez, he was second best as he undoubtedly had been in defeat to Lara the year before. A performance in which he endured considerable punishment and a 9th round stoppage loss.
Do the Warrington losses to Lara and Lopez deceive?
Wood will present fewer of those unorthodox angles and will be less perplexing to fight than the Mexicans proved despite the disparity in form, activity and Wood’s recent win over Lara. Supporters of the former champion can point to important wins over Lee Selby, the elusive Kid Galahad and ‘bookend’ wins versus Kiko Martinez, the Spanish road warrior, at either end of Warrington’s prime years. For those who believe Warrington can roll back the clock and deliver another pulsating win, with busyness and smart offence, 15/4 is available for the Points Decision.
This conclusion requires belief that Warrington can do what other pressure fighters, like Barry McGuigan and Ricky Hatton could not, i.e, maintain the exuberant output of his 20s in to his 30s. Scant evidence that he can. It assumes that much of Warrington’s travails these past three years are the result of circumstance; the absence of his partisan crowd for key fights and the mercurial nature of the two world class Mexicans he encountered. Experience encourages punters to resist the sentimentality this is likely to represent.
Activity is important. This will be Wood’s third fight of 2023 as he prepares to capitilise on his late bloom and secure a career crescendo at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground stadium in 2024.
In rematching Lara, three months after losing in devastating knockout fashion, Wood proved the naysayers wrong by finding a tactical plan to negate Lara’s attacks and the discipline and guile to execute it. His ring generalship and composure was exemplary and while Warrington presents a different challenge, I believe he has the chin, fitness and calmness to outmanoeuvre him. Wood will anticipate a torrid opening, Warrington can be safely assumed to feed off the atmosphere and try to recreate the zeal of his Frampton performance. If Wood navigates that early blizzard, he can establish his jab and should be able to match or better Warrington’s strength on the inside and push back a tiring Warrington later in the fight.
Knockdowns are possible and could factor in to your betting, Wood, 8/15 to win, is probably the bigger hitter of the two, his late, late knockout of Michael Conlon the most conspicuous example. However, unless either fighter has regressed further, and that is more likely to be true of the inactive Warrington, then a long fight seems probable.
As tough and reliable as Warrington once was, there is evidence enough to encourage investment in Wood. Perhaps late, by stoppage. A tempting 12/1 is available on Wood to win Rounds 10-12 and for those who prefer precision and bigger potential; Warrington down in the 9th and Wood to win in the 10th is a luminous 50/1 as a Bet Builder.
Wood to win. That’s the principle punt.
BOXINGWRITER.CO.UK 
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