Frazer Clarke was so fearful of the damage sustained by his knockout defeat by Fabio Wardley that he started telling his partner about his life-insurance policy and savings.<\/p>\n
The 33 year old lost in the first round to Wardley in their rematch in October, via a knockout so devastating that he required surgery on his cheekbone and jaw before leaving Saudi Arabia to return to his home in the UK.<\/p>\n
His first professional defeat, combined with its nature and his age has even meant his future as a prizefighter being questioned after only 10 fights, but ahead of his return to the ring on Sunday \u2013 against Ghana\u2019s Ebenezer Tetteh at the Resorts World Arena in Birmingham, England \u2013 he insists that he has started to put its damaging consequences behind him.<\/p>\n
Clarke and Wardley were involved in one of the most entertaining heavyweight fights of 2024 when they fought to a bloody draw on an evening in March when he was perhaps unfortunate not to be awarded a decision.<\/p>\n
It was Wardley who departed London\u2019s O2 Arena that night with the more visible damage \u2013 his nose had been bleeding profusely \u2013 but since their rematch he has secured a high-profile fight on June 7 with Jarrell Miller, in contrast to Clarke, who is having to rebuild his career, and had to rebuild his psyche after so harrowing a knockout and defeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy confidence was sky high going into that fight and it was taken away in a second,\u201d he told BoxingScene. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a major mistake; I\u2019ve watched it back; I probably could have done the littlest thing different, but I got caught with a good shot early on, and I tried to fight back and never really recovered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was painful \u2013 it was a sharp pain. You can see me at the end of the fight \u2013 I\u2019m just looking out the ring at my missus [Danni-Leigh Robinson] to say, \u2018Don\u2019t panic \u2013 I\u2019m okay\u2019. I took a glimpse up the top of the ring on the screen and see how bad it looked \u2013 it felt like someone was sticking something inside my head. As I was going out of the arena, that\u2019s when I saw the dent on the side of my head. \u2018Oh, shit \u2013 it is really bad.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got kids. I was in the back of that ambulance going through my phone looking for my life-insurance policy; looking for insurance policies. It\u2019s not a nice place to be. It was bad. I was telling her about certain savings and things that she didn\u2019t know about; what to do with the kids. It wasn\u2019t nice. The worst goes through your head.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe frightening thing was, being over in Saudi Arabia, the language barrier and being in an ambulance and blue-lighted to hospital\u2026 My missus is trying to ask what\u2019s going on, and basically they were just saying I needed a brain scan. But when they said the word \u2018brain\u2019 in broken English everyone was bloody frightened. \u2018Oh my God \u2013 don\u2019t tell me I\u2019ve got brain damage.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLuckily, my missus will not be denied \u2013 she searched the hospital far and wide to find an English speaker. She found an English-speaking doctor finishing their shift, and they could translate everything that was going on. She\u2019s a godsend \u2013 it was a very good hospital. It was very chill, but she was making people do things. Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 they looked after us well. But she wanted things to happen and to happen now.<\/p>\n
\u201cFifteen minutes after being in the hospital I was having a brain scan. Them 15 minutes beforehand, when they were just talking about the brain and pointing at my head, it was worrying. As soon as I came out of the scan and found out it was just my cheekbone, the panic was over, really.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clarke had suffered a broken cheekbone and jaw, contributing to the disturbing indent that appeared in his face. His eight-year-old daughter Mia had watched what unfolded on television, making a quick recovery for Clarke and seeing her to reassure her another priority. His three-year-old son Trent hadn\u2019t watched but, similarly, could detect that something was troubling those closest to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After returning to his duties as a father, Clarke struggled with the reality of what had unfolded against Wardley. There followed a difficult period of self-reflection and healing both physically and psychologically \u2013 he will be tested on both counts on Sunday by the 36-year-old Tetteh, who has previously lost only to Daniel Dubois and Dillian Whyte \u2013 before, eventually, returning to training, and then sparring, and then fully focusing for his date on the undercard of the light-heavyweight rematch between Ben Whittaker and Liam Cameron. He has also been lifted by the news that Danni-Leigh will give birth to a baby daughter in July.<\/p>\n
\u201cMila was actually watching at home, so it was shit,\u201d he said. \u201cI came straight from the airport, I landed at Heathrow, I went straight to her school and spoke to reception and they totally understood \u2013 pulled her out of her lesson. I just wanted her to know that I was okay, because that last image she\u2019d seen of me was me with a really bad injury, so I went straight in there and she gave me the biggest hug and said she\u2019s still very proud of me. I got back to my son \u2013 he\u2019s three so he didn\u2019t quite know the extent but he could sense something was going on, and gave me all the love in the world, and after that I was fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI got to the hospital about 2am, got out of the hospital, [was] operated on about 11am, had a couple of hours\u2019 sleep, then was in the airport. I left on the Sunday night and got back on the Monday morning. They were saying to me at one point I might have to be there for six weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can remember at one point looking at about four Fabio Wardleys. I thought, \u2018It\u2019s an uphill battle from here\u2019, and he\u2019s a good finisher and he finished me off. Psychologically there wasn\u2019t too much I could do about it, but you get a little bit embarrassed \u2013 of course you do. You\u2019re fighting on a big stage. But I quickly got over that. Not a lot of people in the world can do what I do. I don\u2019t really pay too much attention to that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was some dark days, for sure; embarrassment; you feel like you\u2019ve let yourself down; let others down. But time\u2019s a good healer; with good people around you; believing in myself and what it takes to become a champion\u2026 A lot of champions are made in adversity, and I believe that I\u2019ll definitely be one of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were sometimes where it wasn\u2019t so easy. That\u2019s just normal after that situation and that outcome. But I spent some really good time with my family; some really good time in the gym, and I was glad to get a fight date and have something to look forward to.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI needed quite a bit of time not to take any impact on the area affected. I listened to the advice, had a bit of a chill from sparring, but I was training away; ticking over.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a really good surgeon. Thank God I didn\u2019t have to have no metal \u2013 no plates or wires \u2013 so it was all pretty much straightforward. The fractured cheek bone healed itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t eat food for a solid eight or nine days after. I couldn\u2019t eat anything properly. I lost weight at the beginning but as soon as I could start eating again I made up for it \u2013 I probably dropped four, five kilo [between eight and 11lbs].\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t in a great headspace anyway. With the hunger on top and then being pissed off with the result and everything, I wasn\u2019t the best person to be around for a while. Even though no one told me that, I definitely wasn\u2019t the most enjoyable person to be around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frazer Clarke was so fearful of the damage sustained by his knockout defeat by Fabio Wardley that he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,16143,5063,16142,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-26433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ebenezer-tetteh","10":"tag-fabio-wardley","11":"tag-frazer-clarke","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114351125632566013","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}