Wearing a black tracksuit, with the hood up, he smiles and shakes hands with the security assigned to move him around the various interviews he has lined up on a busy Monday in London.

As is now customary for Queensberry Promotions events that take place at O2 Arena, the main event fighters clear much of their media obligations on the Monday of fight week to save time later in the week and kickstart the promotion five days out.

It has now become common for this day to take place in the conference rooms of a hotel just across the water from the arena itself. For Wardley, he is out of the vehicle and straight into a roundtable with the British written press.

He sits down in his chair, takes one look at the dictaphones shoved in his direction and decides to get cracking himself. “Yep,” he says. “Training camp has gone well, yep, I feel good, yep, I’m ready to knock him out, yep, I’m going to win, yep.”

He is parodying the standard of media questions this deep into a fight’s promotion, when much of the talk has been done already, particularly in the case of a rematch. He has a point.

But thereafter, he sits back and answers each question honestly and thoughtfully. He says, for instance, that he feels “free” again after losing his world heavyweight title to Daniel Dubois in their initial May clash and that his position as underdog in the rematch feels far more comfortable.

“Honestly, it’s great,” he says of life as the challenger. “I really love it. It feels more natural, feels more weightless.

“Don't get me wrong, it's all fantastic being a world champion and holding that and I don't think it's necessarily just the fact that I was world champion, but having an undefeated record as well and going in with such a good fighter like Daniel holds a level of weight.

“And now I just feel free. The kind of talk around the fight has changed. I'm back to being expected to lose and things going worse for me and I'm the challenger and I'm the chaser and honestly for me it all just feels like 'Ah, this is it, this is the nice bit.’

“It feels great.”

Around 20 minutes later, Dubois is in the same red swivel chair but the contrast in the pair could not be more stark. While Wardley thinks about his answers and speaks lengthily with the press, it’s like Dubois would rather be anywhere else. Chances are, he genuinely would.

The 29-year-old is constantly looking around the room, out the window or towards the door if it opens. At one point, while a journalist asks him about losing his focus inside the ring, he completely loses focus on the question. When someone brings up something he said a few months ago he says: “I don’t know, man. I just say random things.”

He has always been like this, without any desire to talk about fighting, just a desire to actually do it.

On days like this, when media checklists are ticked off, it can be easy to forget that these men earn their living from having a fist fight every few months and that every day is dedicated to the pursuit of that. But, with Dubois and Wardley, that is where the similarities end.

There have been wide contrasts between opponents in British boxing before, like Nigel Benn, the rough, tough former soldier, and Christopher Livingstone Eubank with his lord-of-the-manor shtick and monocle.

But Wardley, the white-collar world champion and Dubois, bred to box since he could walk, are about as far apart as two worlds can get in the same profession. They proved that opposites attract in May, when they combined to produce a bloody, up-and-down war in their first fight. Most are expecting more of the same in Saturday’s rematch.

Dubois is the champion now and a victory, in what is a contracted rematch, will free him up to pursue whatever unification fights he wants. At the same time, a second successive defeat for Wardley would leave him a world away from where he wants to be.

It has gone under the radar somewhat, but Saturday’s undercard includes a second successive outing in Britain for history’s only double super-heavyweight Olympic champion Bakhodir Jalolov.

Following his success in the amateurs, the Uzbek southpaw has long been tipped to transfer that success into the paid ranks. But now, more than eight years on from his pro debut, Jalolov (17-0, 15 KOs) is still yet to register a meaningful win.

The 32-year-old, who is contracted to Queensberry Promotions, last boxed on May 9, on the undercard of Dubois’ victory over Wardley. He stopped Agron Smakici in the seventh of their 10-rounder but his performance did little to suggest that he is a man capable of challenging the likes of Dubois, Wardley or Moses Itauma at the top of the division over the next few years.

This time he faces Britain’s own Solomon Dacres (10-1, 3 KOs). There was a time that those in control of someone like Dacres, rebuilding after his 2024 defeat to David Adeleye, might steer him away from a noted bogeyman. But it says much about Jalolov’s current standing that they fancy the job against “The Big Uzbek.”

Either way, it’s time for Jalolov to really get moving. This will be the first time since 2023 that he has managed two professional fights in the space of five months. Dacres, also 32, will tell us much about where Jalolov actually fits into this everchanging heavyweight picture.