Why Dubois vs. Wardley 2 is a better all-British heavyweight boxing battle than Fury vs. Joshua superfight

The promotional fight poster for Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua in Cardiff on December 11 says it all.

Much promotional wrangling, most prominently featuring Eddie Hearn and Dana White's occasionally entertaining and often tedious back-and-forth, centered on the fight taking place in the UK.

Whatever the various motivations, Hearn's focus on getting the fight on British soil was laudable. Fans in Fury and Joshua's homeland have waited maddeningly long enough for this spectacle.

And it certainly will be a spectacle, perhaps one of the last truly great crossover boxing events in the country, now that the sport generally resides away from the mainstream, in the shadow of Premier League soccer like all others.

It will be a truly significant moment in a nation's collective sporting consciousness, given both Fury and Joshua have gargantuan public profiles to match their dimensions.

Daniel Dubois and Fabio Wardley, by contrast, could probably walk a decent distance down a few high streets without being recognised. But on Saturday night, WBO heavyweight champion Dubois will face Wardley in an instant rematch of their instant classic from May this year. In purely sporting terms, it's the best all-British heavyweight fight of 2026.

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Wardley came into the ring as the WBO heavyweight champion for the first time. He won the organisation's interim belt with a thrilling 11th-round win over Joseph Parker in October 2025 and was upgraded to full champion status after Oleksandr Usyk vacated his title.

Dubois was back in action after his second career loss to Ukrainian great Usyk, who stopped him inside five masterful rounds at Wembley, sparking fresh questions over the Englishman's durability as an elite-level heavyweight.

Such queries looked entirely valid when, within 10 seconds of the opening bell, Wardley clipped Dubois on the top of the head with a winging right hook and put Dubois on the seat of his shorts. The challenger regrouped well to take the second but was forced to the canvas once again in the third.

Queensberry, Leigh Dawney

From that point, Wardley's confidence and eagerness to add to a career record of 19 KOs in 20 wins proved to be his undoing. His attacks were rudimentary and predictable as he looked for the finishing shot; Dubois got some bounce into his footwork and began landing heavy artillery at will off his ramrod jab.

By the midway point, Wardley's nose was a bloodied mess and, although he frequently enjoyed success in the face of the onslaught, Dubois had opened up a commanding lead by the time referee Howard Foster stepped in to spare a battered and bedraggled Wardley in round 11.

"I made the call [to ask for the rematch] within two or three days, once my other eye opened and I could see all the buttons on the phone," Wardley joked in an interview with "="" href="https://