\n<\/p>\n
Daniel Dubois refused a fist bump from world champion Fabio Wardley as the pair came face-to-face at a <\/b>lively news conference in London.<\/b><\/p>\n
The world title fight between two of Britain’s biggest punchers takes place at Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena on 9 May.<\/p>\n
After some long-winded bickering between the two camps, the fighters – relatively restrained until that point – finally sparked into life.<\/p>\n
Wardley said he would “flatten” the challenger. “My power is proven. If there’s time left on the clock, I’m taking you out of the fight,” he added.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old – with 19 stoppages in 20 wins – will make the first defence of his WBO crown, having claimed the ‘interim’ title against Joseph Parker before being upgraded to full champion when Oleksandr Usyk vacated the belt.<\/p>\n
Former IBF champion Dubois, 28, is coming off a devastating knockout loss to generational great Usyk last summer. <\/p>\n
“If you look back, when it gets dicey, he’s not up for it,” Wardley said of Dubois, who has faced accusations of folding too easily in his three stoppage defeats.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s news conference took place at Dutch Hall, a converted 16th-century church tucked away in the heart of the city.<\/p>\n
Dubois – never one for lengthy monologues – kept his answers short and matter of fact. <\/p>\n
But the Londoner was clear in his intention. “Victory by knockout, by any means necessary,” he said.<\/p>\n
When the fighters eventually stepped forward for the obligatory face-off, Dubois looked away first as Wardley smirked.<\/p>\n
Moments later Wardley extended his fist in a gesture of respect, but Dubois shook his head and refused to engage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Daniel Dubois refused a fist bump from world champion Fabio Wardley as the pair came face-to-face at a lively news conference in London. The world title fight between two of Britain’s biggest punchers takes place at Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena on 9 May. After some long-winded bickering between the two camps, the fighters – relatively<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9469","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\/9469","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=9469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}