-
Nick Parkinson
Once upon a time, Frazer Clarke got paid for stopping fights rather than being in them.
Clarke, who challenges Fabio Wardley for the British heavyweight title in a rematch on the Artur Beterbieb vs. Dmitry Bivol undercard in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday (DAZN), used to work as a security guard at sporting events to make ends meet, while he was an elite amateur boxer.
“I was a young guy at the time, boxing for Team GB as an amateur trying to get to the Olympics and I needed to make a few pennies,” Clarke told ESPN. “It also kept me from getting into trouble at the weekends. I worked at a lot of the [Anthony] Joshua fights, while he was coming up and then at big fights like the ones he had against Dillian Whyte and Wladimir Klitschko. I did both the Carl Froch versus George Groves fights and others with the likes of Kell Brook, Nathan Cleverly and Tony Bellew.”
Clarke (8-0-1, 6 KOs), who turned pro in February 2022, said he worked news conferences, weigh-ins and fight nights, and aside from a paycheck, he enjoyed being around the fighters, learning the business.
“It was a strange one with AJ because at the time I was running with him, working alongside him in the gym, sparring with him and even staying in the same digs as him in Sheffield but then when it came to fight night I was on the other side of the ropes working,” Clarke said.
At the end of the first round during the Joshua-Whyte fight in 2015, Joshua landed a left hook right after the bell. Whyte responded by throwing a left hand over referee Howard Foster to hit Joshua, and then again while Foster was pushing Joshua to his corner. Clifton Mitchell, a former heavyweight and head of security at Wembley entered the ring along with Clark to separate teh fighters and stop the brawl from escalating.
“Their teams came steaming into the ring at the end of Round 1 and I was there in the ring trying to stop it,” Clarke said. “I saw what was happening, it was getting close to the ref calling it and I didn’t want a good fight to get stopped because of anything happening after the bell went so I was trying to get everyone out of the ring.”
Clarke got involved with security work through Mitchell after he saw him at a small boxing show.
“It was about 2011, 2012, Clarke said. “He probably heard I was getting up to mischief at weekends and instead of throwing my hands about in night clubs, he said why don’t you come and work at the boxing.
“Fight nights have become like a second home to me, I know the procedures, I know the big arenas, I know what the fans are like and I know what to expect from the big shows now. It’s normal for me.”
Clarke, 33, from Burton-on-Trent, stopped security work in 2018 as he got closer to representing Great Britain at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which he eventually did and won a bronze medal at super heavyweight.
But Clarke’s Olympic dream was also nearly KO’d in 2016 when he was stabbed.
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time in my local town, maybe I was getting up to stuff that I shouldn’t have been as an elite athlete and had drifted off the right path for a bit,” Clarke told ESPN in 2021.
“I was out drinking, got into an altercation and during the fight I was stabbed three times once in the neck and twice in the leg. At the time I had a two-week-old daughter so it was really a dreadful time for me and my family and I remember at the time thinking, ‘Am I going to be here to bring up my daughter?'”
After turning professional, Clarke won his first eight fights, six by stoppage. Then in March,, Clarke’s first real test came against Wardley. In a thunderous fight, Clarke recovered from a knockdown in Round 5 but crucially was docked a point for a low blow in Round 7. Clarke was disappointed by the draw verdict (115-113, 113-114 and 113-113).
“The draw was hard to take, but it’s part of learning and there are things to build on, I know there are things I can do differently,” Clarke said. “One is not to get dropped like I did in Round 5, and the other is not throw any low blows.”
Clarke has sparred hundreds of rounds with Joshua as well as the likes of heavyweight top prospect Richard Torrez and IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois, who knocked out Joshua last month.
“He’s been saying he’s going to come forward throwing big punches, so we will see if he [Wardley] does that,” Clarke said. “I’ve had a lot of different people in the gym I’ve worked with and I’ve had some good rounds with Daniel Dubois before he fought AJ, Clarke said. “[Wardley has] been saying he’s going to come forward throwing big punches, so we will see if he does that.”
Wardley also had a career before he became a professional boxer. Unlike Clarke, Wardley did not have a long and distinguished amateur career and got involved in the sport as a white-collar boxer.
Wardley (17-0-1, 16 KOs), 29, from Ipswich, worked as a recruitment consultant for the health and social care sector until he stopped to focus on his professional boxing career less than a decade ago. After four fights as an amateur Wardley turned professional in 2017. Since then he has sparred with Whyte and current unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, among others. Whyte has been a big influence on Wardley’s career, which has seen him succeed without the experience of an amateur career. He has knocked out top fighters such Eric Molina, Nathan Gorman and David Adeleye and will enter the ring against Clarke as the defending British heavyweight champion.
“If you want to do it a bit differently then you can, as long as you’re committed, train hard and do everything properly you can make a way in the sport,” Wardley told Sky Sports back in April.
“You’ve got to force your way through a bit, you’ve got to graft and work harder than the rest and get your head down and crack on but you can do it.”
Both believe a good performance in a big stage in Saudi Arabia will transform their careers.
“I’m just experience away from the top fighters now, I want some 12-round experience and then I will be ready,” Clarke said.