For Fabio Wardley, none of this was in the plan.

Not the title belts. Not the ring walks under stadium lights at the home of his beloved Ipswich Town or having rubbed shoulders with music star Ed Sheeran. Certainly not conversations about fighting Oleksandr Usyk, an all-time heavyweight great.

That is because just a little more than a decade ago, Wardley, now 31, was sitting behind a desk in recruitment sales, working a standard nine-to-five job matching people with roles in health and social care. Boxing was not his life. It was not even his sport. Football was his weekend hobby after a brief spell at at the academy of Ipswich as a child.

Now he walks into Manchester’s Co-op Live arena this weekend as the WBO heavyweight champion, defending a version of the world title against fellow Briton Daniel Dubois in one of the biggest fights of his career and a blockbuster battle between two of the division’s biggest hitters.

Should he remain unbeaten, he wants Usyk, the seemingly unbeatable Ukrainian who still sits atop the division.

“If the kid I was then saw me right now, he’d be laughing,” Wardley tells The Athletic. “‘You what? We do what? We’ve become what?’

“When you really take a few steps back and look at it with a bird’s-eye view, it is a bit of a crazy picture.”

Fabio Wardley, pictured wearing a blue Ipswich Town shirt, takes on Daniel Dubois, right, with his WBO heavyweight crown on the line in Manchester on Saturday (Matt McNulty/Getty Images)

It is Hollywood script stuff. Not just because of the quickness of the journey but the route that he has taken.

Wardley started out in white-collar boxing rather than the amateur scene that forges so many champions.

The gym he joined was putting on those types of events rather than training young amateurs. White-collar was born in New York back in the 1980s, when the world-famous Gleason’s Gym offered professional workers with no boxing experience the chance to train.

It has since become a global practice and something that novices turn to either as a charity effort or hobby ,with local event organisers putting on professional-style unlicensed shows to give the average man or woman the chance to have a taste of what boxing is like.

“Back then, I didn’t know what I wanted my career to be,” he says. “I was almost lucky in that sense that boxing found me.

“It just seems like I went to the gym one day and I never left.”

The Englishman was a fish out of water when he got into the ring for the first time at the age of 21, having never boxed competitively before in his life.

“It is not like the amateur shows where it is just a ring in a hall with a few chairs out,” says Wardley. “There’s lights and smoke machines, but I remember being really nervous because it’s different.

“Sometimes, as an amateur, you start out and you’re boxing in the middle of nowhere. I’m boxing in my hometown, I’ve sold 10-plus tickets — like, all my friends, family are there.

“So if things go seriously wrong, it’s in front of everyone I know. It was a bit daunting but I kind of settled into the first minute of the first round and then kind of just got going.”

Wardley wasn’t someone you would have wanted to face if you were just giving boxing a go. He had four of those unlicensed bouts, stopping three of his foes inside the first round.

While his opponent this weekend, Dubois, as well as many others he has faced, toiled as a teenager in amateur gyms and travelled the world facing the best in the vested code, Wardley was able to turn professional in 2017 with only that white-collar experience to lean upon.

He juggled work in recruitment sales with training camps and then trying to get out on small events. He had four fights before a conversation with Dillian Whyte, a British heavyweight contender, saw the established professional take him under his wing. Suddenly, he was boxing on Whyte’s undercard when his mentor faced Derek Chisora in a rematch in 2018 at London’s O2 Arena. He was soon shunted into the spotlight.

Wardley stopped former WBO heavyweight champion Joseph Parker, left, in his last fight in October 2025 (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

When an offer came to spar with Usyk in Ukraine and work wouldn’t give him time off, Wardley quit to fully focus on his surprise new career.

“I just found myself in this place and I thought: ‘I guess we’re in the deep end now’,” he says. “Let’s get swimming.”

Yet Wardley was still being cast as a bit of a novelty act, even by former promoter Eddie Hearn. He was billed as the white-collar boxer who had Whyte holding his hand.

It was when he stopped Simon Vallily, an accomplished amateur who won a Commonwealth Games gold medal, in 2020 to win the English heavyweight title that boxing critics really took note. British and Commonwealth crowns followed.

“After that, I thought: ‘Actually, you know what? I can mix it with these guys’,” he says. “I knew I had some learning to still do but I realised it was a proper career.”

When he blew away Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze-medallist Frazer Clarke in the first round of their rematch after a drawn first bout, catching the eye on the undercard of Artur Beterbiev vs Dmitry Bivol in Saudi Arabia, world-title ambitions sharpened into focus.

It opened the door to a dream night at Portman Road last June, when he became another star from Ipswich by knocking out Australian Justis Huni on the pitch where his football heroes play.

Music sensation Sheeran wasn’t there that night but the pair do occasionally cross paths at the stadium.

“Don’t get me wrong, we’re not like best pals catching up on the weekends and that,” says Wardley. “He’s a busy man with a lot on his schedule, but we’ve had some good chats and sit-downs. If he’s at the game, same as I am, we’ll catch up.”

Could he one day compete with him for the crown of Suffolk’s biggest export?

“I don’t know if I’m matching him just yet,” says Wardley, laughing. “Maybe a couple more world-title fights. Maybe I need to do Portman Road again. I’m closing in.”

Wardley’s last win, a stunning 11th-round stoppage of Joseph Parker, the former WBO champion who has mixed it with the likes of Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder, was his most impressive victory.

Now he faces Dubois, a former IBF champion who is coming off a second defeat to Usyk but has a victory over Joshua to his name. It was a fight that Wardley didn’t have to take.

“Every time I think: ‘OK maybe this is my level or this is my point’,” Wardley says. “I kind of surprise myself with how comfortable I find it.

“So, in terms of a ceiling, I’m really not sure if there is one. I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep pushing myself, keep challenging, keep going for the best fights, biggest opportunities and see where I land when it’s all done.”

Wardley became WBO champion through one of boxing’s familiar political twists.

After beating Parker in October, he held the interim version of the title while the sanctioning body waited on Usyk’s next move. When Usyk relinquished the belt for more lucrative fights (he has since signed to fight kickboxer Rico Verhoeven in a Saudi Arabia-backed event), Wardley was elevated to full champion status.

“That would be the ultimate,” adds Wardley as he imagines fighting Usyk for the undisputed crown. “That is the absolute top of the tree. He is the pinnacle at the moment and he does have all the other belts. He is running the game.”

This one-time office worker from Ipswich, who began as a white-collar boxer, isn’t finished writing his remarkable story.