\n<\/p>\n
Josh Warrington has had to do “everything in his power” to secure a rematch against British featherweight rival Leigh Wood.<\/b><\/p>\n
Warrington, 35, lost a WBA title fight to Wood, 37, in Sheffield in controversial circumstances in October 2023.<\/p>\n
The pair will now face off for a second time in Wood’s home city at the Nottingham Arena on 21 February.<\/p>\n
“From my perspective the rematch was spoken about straight away. I was frustrated because I thought the second fight would be even bigger than the first one,” Warrington told BBC Radio Leeds.<\/p>\n
“It’s a frustration of the sport. I’ve had to do everything in my power to get the fight on, if it meant me wearing pink shorts and walking to the ring with a daft hat on my head I’d have done it. I’d have fought him in his backyard.<\/p>\n
“I’m that desperate to put to bed what I think should have happened in the first fight.<\/p>\n
“I think Leigh has been a bit of a diva over the past few years but he wants to fight there. He wants to fight there [in Nottingham] and I’m fine with that.”<\/p>\n
Wood, who was the defending champion, won the initial bout after Michael Alexander deemed that Warrington could not continue after being knocked down at the end of the seventh round.<\/p>\n
The former IBF world champion said he felt like he was “hard done by” by the referee’s decision.<\/p>\n
“Leigh caught me with a good shot at the end of the round, he says it was well-timed I say lucky, and it buzzes me and I go down to the canvas,” Warrington added.<\/p>\n
“When I was down the bell rang for the end of the round and I got up and went to walk to my corner. I could hear him counting ‘six, seven, eight’ and when I turned around he was already waving his arms to say the fight was over.<\/p>\n
“I later found out I was up in every round on the judges’ scorecards so I feel hard done by and think I should have been given the benefit of the doubt.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Josh Warrington has had to do “everything in his power” to secure a rematch against British featherweight rival Leigh Wood. Warrington, 35, lost a WBA title fight to Wood, 37, in Sheffield in controversial circumstances in October 2023. The pair will now face off for a second time in Wood’s home city at the Nottingham<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boxing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}