Promoter Frank Warren sees nothing wrong with the referee’s stoppage of Justis Huni in the tenth round in his fight against heavyweight contender Fabio Wardley last Saturday night in Ipswich, England.
Warren Backs Huni Stoppage
Warren says Huni (12-1, 7 KOs) was on “shaky legs” when he got up from a knockdown in the tenth, and would have been knocked “spark out” by Wardley (19-0-1, 18 KOs) if the fight had been allowed to continue by referee John Latham.
“No, I don’t. I think the referee did what he had to do, and had he allowed it to go on all he would have done was delay the inevitable,” said Warren to BoxNation when asked if he thought the count was too quick in the referee’s tenth-round stoppage of Huni against Wardley.
Referee’s Quick Huni Count
The fans don’t agree. They believe that Huni was denied the chance to continue fighting by a referee who was overly quick with the stoppage. Huni was fighting a popular British heavyweight, Wardley, on the verge of losing, which makes the premature stoppage look even worse.
“He’s [Huni] in with a guy that’s a devastating finisher. You seen that. What would have happened? He was up. He was on shaky legs, and if he clipped him again, he would have been knocked spark out. I have no idea, and I doubt very much that’ll go anywhere anyway,” said Warren.
Huni’s Stoppage: Was it Fair?
Huni should have been given the benefit of the doubt by the referee, given that he beat the count. If Tyson Fury was allowed to continue fighting when he was motionless for a count of six in his first fight against Deontay Wilder, Huni should have been given a chance to keep fighting by beating the count.
He wasn’t unconscious the way Fury was, and should have been allowed to continue. What makes this look worse is that Huni was a visiting fighter from Australia, competing on British soil against a Brit, with an English referee. The deck was stacked against him. It wouldn’t have been quite a big deal if Huni were British. I mean, it would still look bad, given that he was up at the count of nine against the A-side fighter Wardley.
“He beat a guy that was ranked in the top 10,” said Warren when asked what he learned about Wardley last Saturday.
Fabio beat the fringe contender Huni, but his performance showed that he’s not in the class of many of the top 10 fighters. The way Wardley performed, he’d be knocked out by the older, slower heavyweights like Martin Bakole and Zhilei Zhang. Wardley has no defense, and those guys hit too hard.
“Don’t get me wrong, I lost some rounds in there, and it wasn’t the best performance, and all of that. But. I won. I knocked him out, so I’m on to the next one,” said Wardley to iFL TV about his fight against Huni.
Huni Judges’ Scorecard Revealed
As you can see, Wardley is downplaying how badly behind he was in the fight by saying he had “lost some rounds” against Huni. At the time of the stoppage, the judges had it scored 89-82, 89-82, and 88-83. This means they had Huni ahead by 9 and 7 rounds. It was a complete mismatch.
This suggests that Wardly lacks the technical skills to defeat top-tier fighters. His only chance of winning is by getting lucky by landing a homerun swing if he’s in with someone that gets careless, like Justis did. At an old-looking 30, and slow-healing damage beginning to show on his face, Wardley isn’t young enough to improve his technical skills sufficiently for him to compete against the better heavyweights in the division.
If money is basically what Wardley’s career is all about, he might get lucky and be given a title shot against the winner of the Oleksandr Usyk vs. Daniel Dubois 2 rematch next month. The WBA mandated that Wardley fight the ‘regular’ champion Kubrat Pulev for his secondary belt, not the WBA ‘Super’ title held by Usyk. But perhaps Warren can petition the WBA to allow Wardley to skip the Pulev fight and go straight to the big dogs so he can get a big payday.
If Wardley can stick around for another 10 years to fight into his 40s, like Derek Chisora, he can become rich. The 41-year-old journeyman Chisora has been a bottom-fringe-level heavyweight his entire career, never won a world title, yet his net worth is estimated at $15 million.
Chisora got that by being the B-side opponent for Tyson Fury x 3, Vitali Klitschko, Dillian Whyte x 2, Joseph Parker x 2, Kubrat Pulev x 2, David Haye, and David Price. He lost to almost all of those fighters except for two, and still made millions. Wardley can do the same if he stays around long enough. He can become the next Chisora.
Last Updated on 06/09/2025
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