Fabio Wardley has stepped into the firing line to shield his trainer, Ben Davison, after a storm of criticism followed Moses Itauma’s failed bid to become the second-youngest heavyweight world champion in history.
On Saturday night at London’s O2 Arena, Itauma looked like the coming man for eight rounds. He bullied Filip Hrgovic, punched in clusters, and banked round after round. Then the tank emptied.
By the ninth, the 21-year-old’s legs betrayed him. His arms slowed. The Croatian, battle-hardened and patient, began to walk him down. Before Hrgovic could close the show, Itauma’s corner hurled in the towel, ending a performance that had started like a coronation and finished like a cautionary tale.
The fallout was instant. Itauma had admitted before the fight that he had never gone 12 rounds in sparring. Once the result was in, that detail became ammunition. Fingers pointed at the gym. At the preparation. And, inevitably, at Davison.
Wardley, who shares that same corner team, has heard enough.
“It’s my turn,” he said, speaking with the conviction of a man who knows the spotlight is coming back his way. He believes Itauma will still become a world champion, but he’s not waiting around for the narrative to change on its own. “It’s my turn to do my bit for the gym. It's my turn to prove because I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of criticism he's [Davison] received and just almost in shock of just like, I don't know another trainer in British boxing that gets so much stick after a loss.”
He didn’t stop there. Wardley called the backlash “delusional” and made it clear he’s taking it personally.
“I find it bemusing, like it's delusional to me. If anything, that's added a bit of fuel to me to be like, ‘Alright, fine, no worries – I'll show you what us, the team, Ben Davison, what we can all do. I'll prove it to you. I'll take that on my shoulders. I'll wear that, no problem’.”
Wardley knows exactly what it feels like to have the fight slip away late. Against Daniel Dubois, he dominated early, then faded brutally. He absorbed heavy punishment, stayed on his feet longer than most expected, and was finally pulled out in the 11th. The towel never came, but the beating did.
He has no complaints about how his own corner handled that night.
“I'll repeat over and over again, the people in my corner aren't new,” he said. “Like Daniel and Don [Charles, Dubois’s trainer], for example. I'm not flicking from coach to coach to coach to coach to people who don’t know me. One, I’ve had Robert Hodgins, who’s been my coach since I started. And I mean that from since I first ever put on a pair of gloves. I trust that man with my life.
“Same with Ben Davison. He's been with me for five, six, maybe coming up to seven years. I trust that man as well. So, these aren’t new people.
“These aren’t fresh people that are inexperienced or don’t know me. They’ve seen me at hard spas. They’ve seen me through hard fights and hard moments and hard occasions. They know my durability and what I can go through and how I can come out on the other side.”
That trust will be tested again on 17 October, when Wardley steps back in with Dubois in a rematch that doubles as a chance to regain his WBO title and to restore some of the gym’s bruised reputation. The stakes are no longer just about belts. They’re about validation.
Outside the camp, not everyone is rushing to condemn Davison. Queensberry promoter Frank Warren also moved to defend him, while making it clear there will be serious conversations after Itauma’s defeat.
“Regarding Ben, we will have a chat,” Warren said. “There’s certain things that I’ve seen in the fight and seen on the night that obviously have got to be dealt with.
“You have to manage a fight. All he’d done, he got in the ring, he just went and put his foot down on the accelerator and pushed it in overdrive and never took it off.
“He never went out; he never sort of went back to the jab, moved around, just took it easy, calmed down. If he’d have just boxed – what was he, eight rounds up on all the cards? All he had to do was box.”
That is the frustration. Itauma had the fight in his hands, the cards in his pocket, and the arena believing. He chose to chase a statement instead of a steady finish, and Hrgovic, as so many seasoned heavyweights do, waited for the young man to burn himself out.
Now the questions fall at Davison’s door. Did the game plan ask too much too soon? Was the sparring wrong? Was the corner too slow to rein him in?
Wardley doesn’t flinch under those questions. He sees a different story: a young heavyweight learning a brutal lesson and a trainer being hammered for standing in the biggest arenas, night after night.
For him, the answer won’t come in interviews or arguments. It will come under the lights, with Dubois in front of him and the same much-scrutinised corner at his back.
