The horrifying beating he took May 9 didn’t dissuade the former WBO heavyweight champ from committing to picking up right where they left off barely five months later. There was nothing his promoter, Frank Warren, or anyone else could do to convince Wardley that this second fight Saturday night with the heavy-handed Dubois will take place too soon after a brutal battle that correctly caused skeptics to wonder whether Wardley would ever be the same.

That same stubbornness enabled Wardley, with all of four unofficial white-collar contests on his amateur resume, to defy the odds and become one of the most successful heavyweights in boxing. He thinks technical tweaks and a little more patience will help him finish Dubois “when” Wardley hurts him again early in a 12-round rematch DAZN will stream on pay-per-view and to subscribers of its Ultimate plan from O2 Arena in London.

If their second bout becomes another spectacular slugfest, though, Wardley won’t adjust his strategy.

“If it’s going to be a war, it will be a war,” Wardley told a group of reporters recently in London. “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 [Charlotte].

“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.”

The 31-year-old Wardley’s willingness to go at it again with Dubois is telling yet terrifying because Wardley withstood so much punishment prior to referee Howard Foster halting their fan-friendly fight in the 11th round at Co-op Live Arena.

The Ipswich native believes he’ll demolish Dubois this time around, something Wardley (20-1-1, 19 KOs) couldn’t do when he dropped Dubois (23-3, 22 KOs) once apiece in the first and third rounds of their first fight. His unwavering confidence lifted Wardley to heavyweight heights he never targeted when he began boxing at the late age of 21.

That type of self-belief and fearlessness separate men like Wardley from almost all of us. We can only hope, however, those traits don’t lead to a devastating downfall in a rematch seemingly scheduled too soon after Dubois brutalized him.

It was encouraging to learn Teofimo Lopez is willing to move forward with his showdown against Ryan Garcia next even if it isn’t a welterweight title unification fight.

More champions should take this pragmatic approach to securing fights fans want to see most when sanctioning organizations order them to face other opponents.

Jack Catterall clearly deserves his shot at the WBA 147-pound championship next. The WBA would actually keep its word for a change if it honors the guarantee it made to Catterall and strips Lopez if the newly crowned titleholder tries to face anyone other than the British southpaw in his first title defense.

Thankfully, Lopez recognizes that, while it would halt his pursuit of becoming undisputed welterweight champ, it doesn’t matter if the WBA belt he won from Rolando “Rolly” Romero on August 22 is at stake against Garcia, the WBC champ. Is a single consumer going to skip paying for a ticket to Garcia-Lopez, pay-per-view access or a DAZN ultimate plan because the WBA belt isn’t at stake?

What matters much more is that two well-known contemporaries can make one of the most marketable, significant fights in boxing next.

Wasting a lot of money in legal fees to try to force the WBA to allow Lopez (23-2, 13 KOs) to defend his title against Garcia (26-2, 21 KOs, 1 NC) next is inadvisable and unnecessary.

Lopez’s welterweight run should be about maximizing his earning potential, not squandering hundreds of thousands of dollars in sanctioning fees. Lopez also has the financial backing of DAZN with or without the WBA belt, which makes a sanctioning body belt less valuable to him than other fighters with weaker resumes and/or less leverage in negotiations.

The former unified lightweight champ did, after all, just soundly defeat the former champion who dropped and out-pointed Garcia just 17 months ago.

Sergio Mendoza’s emotional, life-changing championship win Saturday night in Chicago was a welcome reminder of what makes this sport special.

Ricardo Sandoval was a 10-1 favorite for good reason entering their 12-round fight for the Southern California-based champion’s WBA and WBC flyweight titles.

Mendoza (28-1, 24 KOs) took the bout on approximately two weeks’ notice, and only because Sandoval’s original opponent, Ring and WBO strawweight champ Oscar Collazo, suffered a rib injury during training camp. Worse yet, IBF junior flyweight champ Thanongsak Simsri (41-1, 36 KOs) overwhelmed Mendoza in his previous fight, a second-round knockout defeat April 13 in Tokyo.

On paper, Mendoza resembled Neider Valdez, the overmatched late replacement Collazo (15-0, 12 KOs) knocked out in the second round June 20 in Oceanside, California, to secure his shot at Sandoval’s belts.

No one beyond Mendoza’s team seemed to understand, though, that the 26-year-old Mexican southpaw wasn’t about to squander this unforeseen second chance. Motivated more due to the recent death of his brother, the 5-foot-8 Mendoza picked apart Sandoval as if he were the heavy favorite, dropped him three times and won by fifth-round technical knockout to thrust himself toward the top of the 112-pound division.

It’s an inspirational tale of resilience based on what Mendoza overcame the past six months.

■ The peculiar career of Bakhodir Jalolov will continue on the Dubois-Wardley undercard. It’s perplexing to watch the two-time Olympic medalist from Uzbekistan box the same level of opposition for such a long period of time. The 6-foot-7 southpaw, once touted as a future heavyweight champ, will face light-punching Englishman Solomon Dacres (10-1, 3 KOs) in a 10-rounder. Assuming the heavily favored Jalolov (17-0, 15 KOs) wins in his second fight of a deal with Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions, we can only hope he starts taking at least incremental steps up in opposition in 2027. He’s 32 and made his pro debut eight years ago. Why wait any longer?

■ As much as we would want to see Floyd Schofield fight William Zepeda or Abdullah Mason in a lightweight title unification clash next, don’t count on it. Oscar De La Hoya, Schofield’s promoter, won’t match him against Zepeda, another champ Golden Boy Promotions represents. De La Hoya might be more receptive to Schofield facing Mason, the WBO champion promoted by Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc. It would be safer and smarter, however, to have Schofield (20-0, 13 KOs) make an optional defense of his WBA belt next. “Kid Austin” needs to correct his defensive flaws against lesser threats than Zepeda or Mason after an entertaining yet intermittently reckless performance against Lucas Badhi on Saturday night.

■ Bahdi, meanwhile, showed by buzzing Schofield several times that he’d be dangerous for any lightweight. He wasn’t active or strategic enough to upset his younger, more skillful opponent, but the power Schofield commended makes the Canadian contender compelling to watch. Good luck now that he lost, though, enticing any highly ranked lightweights or champions to fight him, unless Bahdi (20-2, 15 KOs) rebuilds himself into a mandatory challenger again.