It looked like the Ipswich man was well on course to retain his WBO heavyweight title, having dropped Dubois twice inside three rounds at Co-op LIVE Arena.

But the challenger regrouped and completely turned the tide. Referee Howard Foster stepped in after 28 seconds of Round 11, but most observers thought it should have been called off far earlier. Wardley’s face was a mess and his granite chin ensured that no matter how much punishment Dubois dished out, he'd still, somehow, remained standing.

Their thriller will go down as one of the fights of the year, but, for Charlotte who was two months pregnant with the couple's second child, it was akin to torture. Now she will watch Wardley attempt to reclaim the title in an immediate rematch with Dubois on Saturday night at London’s O2 Arena.

But this, as Wardley points out, is what they both signed up for. At the end of the fight his face was a mask of crimson, so damaged was his nose. It had ended up looking similarly mangled after his first fight with Frazer Clarke two years earlier, which was another war that experts say “take days off your life.”

“Yes, that’s right, they do,” Wardley says. “But ultimately, I don’t listen to myself. It’s not the aim, or the target, but I am never going to shy away from it. If it’s going to be a war, it will be a war. There’s a level of acceptance that I have agreed with myself. I had that conversation with myself when I started the sport, and I have had it since with my partner.

“She was there for the first one and will be there for this one. As much as she hates it, she loves me too much to not be there. She comes by after to check in and make sure I am still breathing, then she goes back to the hotel and waits for me.”

Once Wardley was wiped clean and patched up he insists he felt no lasting damage from those violent rounds with Dubois. And, while Charlotte slept, he was well enough to tend to their first child, their daughter, who turned a year old a month after that clash with Dubois.

“I was back in my hotel room with my baby,” Wardley said, “bouncing her on my knee, in the early hours of Sunday morning, straight after the fight. She was kicking up, so I got her out of the cot and bounced her. I know it sounds weird, but I was fine. I had a swollen eye and a cut nose and was a bit tired. But overall, I was fine.

“I still had a lump of a baby on my shoulder, and I had to get her to sleep. And nothing is more important than that, so I got that job done.”

By that point, in the early hours of Sunday, May 10, Wardley had already decided that he would trigger the rematch clause in his initial fight contract.

“I decided that immediately,” he said. “In fact, as I was walking back to the dressing room, I sent a part of the team to go and find Frank [Warren] and sort the rematch. What else am I going to do? Run off in another direction?

“I don’t want three easy fights to ‘rebuild my confidence.’ No, get me back in there. I will sort it out myself, I will right the wrongs, I will fix it. I was a victim of my own success. I will be more composed when I knock him down again.”

Wardley (20-1-1, 19 KOs) will become a father of two in December, when their second child is born, yet there is no sense of a softening despite the increasingly brutal nature of his fights. Since that drawn war with Clarke and the one-round rematch victory that followed, he had 10 hard rounds against Justis Huni before he found a knockout punch from nowhere. His clash with Joseph Parker four months later was also not for the faint of heart.

“But Fab, the dad at home, is a different guy to Fabio Wardley the fighter,” he said. “They are different people. They have to be separate. There is a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on.

“I love my child dearly, with every bit of my heart. But, in the nicest possible way, she’s no consideration of mine when I am in the middle of the ring. She can’t be a distraction or a factor in my brain. Otherwise, if that’s in the back of my mind, I will not come through tough times and achieve great things.”

For now, that starts with winning back the WBO title from Dubois to become a two-time world heavyweight champion. Given his well-known journey from the white-collar scene, that will be an incredible achievement in itself.

But The Ring’s No. 6 contender for Oleksandr Usyk’s championship has plans well beyond that. He did not watch his first fight with Dubois until a few weeks later. He also allowed Charlotte to go to bed first so she did not have to relive any of it.

As he watched the rounds tick by, Wardley grew more convinced that he has what it takes to avenge his only loss.

“I had to sit there on my own and take it all in,” he said. “I felt his power, I just wasn’t that bothered by it. It was solid but nothing I couldn’t deal with. I wasn’t happy with the stoppage. I was still on my feet and throwing my hands. I can understand it, but I wasn’t happy with it. We can all be plain and honest and say that the room for growth, between the pair of us, is exponentially in my favor.

“That’s not to discredit Daniel. He’s a great fighter and he has been for a long time. But, across multiple fights, I have shown room for change, growth and adjustment. I did not work and fight this hard to win the title, lose it and then chill out. Throw me back in. I used to start slow, but I don’t anymore. I have at least changed that.”