Warrington eyes the ‘double’
JOSH WARRINGTON aimed to party all summer.
That was the plan, anyway, with his beloved Leeds United clinching promotion and Warrington winning a featherweight unification bout at Headingley.
But Covid-19 put that on hold with the football season suspended and Warrington’s fight with WBA title holder Can Xu, scheduled for yesterday, cancelled.
But as sport returns, the IBF world champion could yet see his dreams realised.
The 29-year-old ‘Leeds Warrior’ is desperate to see Marcelo Bielsa’s side reach the Premier League in the coming weeks before he returns to action later this year.
Warrington, who has won all 30 of his professional fights, said: “We were looking at June 6 at Headingley for the Can Xu unification fight, so it would have been this weekend.
“One of my friends recently said, ‘We would have been getting ready for your fight and celebrating Leeds getting promoted’.
“We had talked about then having a big knees-up watching
England in the Euros and also the Olympics. But it’s one of those things and I think, ‘Bloody hell, there are folk in a lot worse position than myself now’.
“I’ve got my world title and I believe that fight with Can Xu will still happen. It may not happen at Headingley or at the same time as Leeds get promoted.
“But I believe I’ll get to face Xu and become unified world champion.”
Warrington is a Leeds nut and has stuck by them since their topflight demise 16 years ago.
He added: “My dad started taking me as a kid and we were in the Champions League, competing against the giants of Europe.
Torrid
“We’ve had some torrid times since then and nobody would have foreseen Leeds being out of the Premier League for so many years.
“I thought we were going to do it last season, but hopefully this is our time.
“I paraded my world title belt on the pitch at Elland Road and Bielsa came over and bowed as he shook my hand. I thought, ‘That’ll do for me!’ I’ll argue with anyone until
I’m blue in the face that Leeds fans are unique – we have a different mentality to anyone else in the country.
“I’m just a council estate kid who has done good and put the city on the map. The football club mean so much and hopefully we can now get back where we belong.”
Delight
Warrington began fighting professionally a decade ago when he worked as a dental technician.
In May 2018 Warrington beat Lee Selby on the pitch at Elland Road to the delight of a 25,000 crowd before outgunning Carl Frampton in Manchester later that year.
After the fight with Xu, he has dreams of taking his huge army of supporters stateside.
Warrington said: “I had Las Vegas or New York in mind for later this year because I’d like to fight champions like Gary Russell and Shakur Stevenson.
“I’m not even saying I want to headline – I just want my fans to experience it and see me achieve what fighters like Lennox Lewis, Naseem Hamed, Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe did.”