“The WBO world champion. That would be nice,” David Adeleye said of Fabio Wardley, who floated the idea of a rematch in 2026 in an interview with Sky Sports.
That would be nice – but it’s also wildly premature.
Adeleye is not speaking from a position of momentum or leverage. He speaks from memory, of a fight two years ago that ended not only in defeat, but in a one-sided beating. When Adeleye first tried to trade with Wardley, he was overwhelmed almost immediately and learned the hard way that he was not on the same level.
Since then, nothing about his trajectory has forced Wardley to look back.
Adeleye is coming off a clear decision loss to Filip Hrgovic, a fight that pushed him further out of the heavyweight conversation rather than back into it. He’s not ranked by any of the four sanctioning bodies, and he doesn’t have a win that would warrant being mentioned as a title challenger — let alone as a priority defense for a newly crowned champion.
Yet Adeleye talks as if timing is the only obstacle.
“I’m righting my wrong,” he said, acknowledging Wardley’s status as a champion with a target on his back.
However, that target is higher than Adeleye.
Wardley’s realistic options sit in an entirely different bracket, involving names that raise his profile and his bank account. A rematch with a fighter he already dismantled — and who hasn’t rebuilt his case since — offers neither.
Adeleye can talk about revenge all he wants. Until he changes the direction of his career in the ring, it will remain just that: talk, not a path back to Fabio Wardley.
Last updated on 12/12/2025
