“I can feel it in my blood. I can feel it in my bones.”
“I can’t wait to hit something.” Frazer Clarke loves this. Given the extremes both Clarke and Fabio Wardley drove themselves to in their first fight, either could be forgiven for baulking from pitching themselves right back at each other.
But Wardley and Clarke are not wired that way. After fighting over 12 rounds to a virtual standstill in March and a tremendous split draw, they have a ferocious determination to go again and finally find a winner.
For Clarke there has never been a question that this second fight, for all the brutality of the first, was exactly what he wanted.
“Boxing for me is not a thing that I think, it’s not a thing that I do, it’s a thing that I feel,” he told Sky Sports.
“It’s so engrained in me. I love the sport. I love the sporting side of two men getting in the ring and trying to outperform each other.
“I care about me going in there and coming out crowned 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 that sets him apart from his rival.
“I’m not sure he has the same passion for boxing as me,” Clarke said of Wardley. “I think he has a passion for being popular and fame and having a few quid in his pocket.
“Strip me away, take everything from me, you’ll never take the love I have for this sport away from me. I’m not sure he’s the same person.
“He loves the sport but it’s because it’s the sport that he’s good at. It’s a job for him. For me, it’s a cliche 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. It’s what I love.
“Me and him, I think we’re different people.”
Both though refused to yield in their epic first fight. In his white-collar boxing past, in his pro career, Wardley has never experienced a loss.
“I’m still undefeated across the board,” he told Sky Sports. “I still haven’t taken a hard loss and I think if anything out of that draw it gave me so much more admiration, respect, plaudits within boxing to do 12 rounds like that.
“I’m a competitor through and through and I want to win. I want to get the ‘W’, but that fight did my credit no harm either.”
In Clarke’s long and highly successful amateur career, he has naturally taken defeats along the way. Wardley believes his opponent knows how to lose, in a way he does not.
“When you start to lose and lose fights, you see the signs, in the middle of a fight, you start almost getting flashbacks, ‘this is where it went wrong the other time I lost’… It starts to play on your mind. I’ve always questioned how mentally strong Frazer Clarke is. I know how much the outside world can affect him,” Wardley said.
“His own brain can get at him as well. I don’t have quit in me. I might take a little five-second breather and step off for a sec but as soon as I step back in it’s straight back to war. Because I don’t know how to stop.
“I don’t know how to quit and that may be to my own detriment one day. But ultimately that’s my fighting style, that’s how I go about things and how I’ll continue to go about things.”
His prediction: “A little less blood and a lot more war.
“At least on my part.”
Glove dispute
The two heavyweights have a fierce rivalry and that spilled over when their respective teams argued over the gloves the day before the fight.
Michael Ofo, from Wardley’s management team, told Sky Sports: “I was happy with our gloves, I was happy with their gloves. I left the room (of the meeting). Something just said to me, go back in the room, I don’t know why I did, I went back in and they had our gloves out with the British Board and they were complaining about the gloves.
“They shouldn’t be touching our gloves without us present.
“The British board told them there’s nothing wrong with the gloves, the gloves are perfectly fine… Both teams were just going back and forth.”
Angel Fernandez, Clarke’s trainer, said: “We felt like the gloves didn’t have enough padding. But it’s no biggie, I don’t know why they’re making a fuss about it. It’s not them fighting.”
Power or pace?
Wardley shaved off some weight for this second fight, while Clarke did weigh in heavier than first time around.
That has been questioned. Former world champion Johnny Nelson said: “It does surprise me.
“Are you thinking I’m going to put more weight on so I’ve got more power in my punch so I’ve got more to push forward and lean on you? I don’t know.
“If I was working with Frazer on this, I’d work on pace, a consistent pace to work at and step it up. You know what you’ve got to improve on, you’ve got the intelligence to adapt to it.
“For Fabio, he now knows that he can work at a heavy pace for 12 rounds and he knows he can hurt Frazer Clarke. Whereas Frazer, I’m just surprised he’s put the weight on. I don’t get the method behind the madness but he’ll probably tell us after the fight.”
However, the weigh-in in Riyadh on Friday was at a later time of day than it was for the first encounter in March so is not an exact equivalent.
Clarke, by all accounts, has taken himself to new levels in his training camp for this fight.
“It’s designed to make you better but it’s also designed to break you,” he told Sky Sports. “It’s all geared to one thing and that is to execute a plan and a performance come fight night.
“It’s quite amazing the things you learn about yourself and the things you learn about life during boxing camp.”
That combined with his determination to change the outcome of the first fight, leaves him totally determined.
“I was devastated (at the draw). Because I’m a winner. I’m not here to take part,” Clarke said.
“We have the chance to make everything right and I’m going to do that.
“It’s almost sad, but I am what I am and the sport has made me what I am today and just like everyone in this room, everyone that’s going to come and watch, the passion I have for this sport I can’t really put it into words.
“I’m ready to go do a job.”
Fabio Wardley’s huge rematch with Frazer Clarke is on the epic Artur Beterbiev vs Dmitry Bivol bill on Saturday October 12 live on Sky Sports Box Office. Book Wardley vs Clarke 2 and Beterbiev vs Bivol now!
