Wardley seeks spring date for first title defence

Fabio Wardley hopes to make his first defence of the WBO world title in the spring – with a number of potential opponents under consideration.

Wardley was declared champion in November after Oleksandr Usyk relinquished the belt, rather than make a mandatory defence against the Ipswich heavyweight.

And his preference is for his first fight as champion to take place in the UK rather than overseas, having stopped Joseph Parker in the 11th round at London’s O2 Arena in November in his most recent contest.

“We’re aiming for April/May time, something like that. That’s a good time-frame, allowing enough time for a (training) camp and all the rest, but nothing’s solidly in the book as yet,” Wardley told BBC Radio Suffolk.

Fellow Briton Moses Itauma is the number one ranked challenger but his next fight against Jermaine Franklin has been rescheduled for March.

So second-in-line Filip Hrgovic, Agit Kabayel and veteran Derek Chisora could all be on the ‘possibles’ list to face Wardley.

“There’s no backwards steps anymore, not at this stage. It would be the likelihood of a Chisora, something like that. He’s probably more of a front-runner over someone like Kabayel,” he said.

“Maybe other names to throw in there would be the likes of Hrgovic, potentially, or (China’s Zhilei) Zhang. We have to look within the constraints of the WBO rankings and pick from there.

Wardley would still love an opportunity to take on Usyk, who still holds the WBA, WBC and IBF heavyweight belts, but accepts it is a case of having to bide his time.

“That’s up to the man himself. A fight between us could be as far away or as close as he wants it to be. It could be next or never,” he said.

“He holds the keys in the division, he’s earned that right to dictate things.”

Another opponent Wardley would love to face is former world champion Tyson Fury, who announced the end of his most recent ‘retirement’ two weeks ago.

“He wants a little warm-up fight and then to try and grab a world title around the summer time,” said 31-year-old Wardley.

“We were trying to poke and prod him into a fight but I don’t think he wants to jump that deep into the water after a year out of the ring. He’s going to dip his toe back in and maybe we can catch him in the summer.”

Wardley believes Usyk might be reluctant to take on Fury again in the short term, having beaten him twice already, so Wardley represents the latter’s best opportunity of a world title shot.

“There’s only two options for that – me and Usyk. As a plan he might try to snatch mine off me and then try and get hold of the Usyk fight again,” he added.