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.

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.

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 – against Ghana’s Ebenezer Tetteh at the Resorts World Arena in Birmingham, England – he insists that he has started to put its damaging consequences behind him.

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.

It was Wardley who departed London’s O2 Arena that night with the more visible damage – his nose had been bleeding profusely – 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.

“My confidence was sky high going into that fight and it was taken away in a second,” he told BoxingScene. “It wasn’t a major mistake; I’ve 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. 

“It was painful – it was a sharp pain. You can see me at the end of the fight – I’m just looking out the ring at my missus [Danni-Leigh Robinson] to say, ‘Don’t panic – I’m okay’. I took a glimpse up the top of the ring on the screen and see how bad it looked – it felt like someone was sticking something inside my head. As I was going out of the arena, that’s when I saw the dent on the side of my head. ‘Oh, shit – it is really bad.’

“We’ve 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’s not a nice place to be. It was bad. I was telling her about certain savings and things that she didn’t know about; what to do with the kids. It wasn’t nice. The worst goes through your head.

“The frightening thing was, being over in Saudi Arabia, the language barrier and being in an ambulance and blue-lighted to hospital… My missus is trying to ask what’s going on, and basically they were just saying I needed a brain scan. But when they said the word ‘brain’ in broken English everyone was bloody frightened. ‘Oh my God – don’t tell me I’ve got brain damage.’ 

“Luckily, my missus will not be denied – 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’s a godsend – it was a very good hospital. It was very chill, but she was making people do things. Don’t get me wrong – they looked after us well. But she wanted things to happen and to happen now.

“Fifteen 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.”

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’t watched but, similarly, could detect that something was troubling those closest to him. 

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 – 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 – 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.

“Mila was actually watching at home, so it was shit,” he said. “I came straight from the airport, I landed at Heathrow, I went straight to her school and spoke to reception and they totally understood – pulled her out of her lesson. I just wanted her to know that I was okay, because that last image she’d 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’s still very proud of me. I got back to my son – he’s three so he didn’t 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. 

“I got to the hospital about 2am, got out of the hospital, [was] operated on about 11am, had a couple of hours’ 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.

“I can remember at one point looking at about four Fabio Wardleys. I thought, ‘It’s an uphill battle from here’, and he’s a good finisher and he finished me off. Psychologically there wasn’t too much I could do about it, but you get a little bit embarrassed – of course you do. You’re 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’t really pay too much attention to that. 

“There was some dark days, for sure; embarrassment; you feel like you’ve let yourself down; let others down. But time’s a good healer; with good people around you; believing in myself and what it takes to become a champion… A lot of champions are made in adversity, and I believe that I’ll definitely be one of them.

“There were sometimes where it wasn’t so easy. That’s 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. 

“I 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.

“I had a really good surgeon. Thank God I didn’t have to have no metal – no plates or wires – so it was all pretty much straightforward. The fractured cheek bone healed itself.

“I couldn’t eat food for a solid eight or nine days after. I couldn’t eat anything properly. I lost weight at the beginning but as soon as I could start eating again I made up for it – I probably dropped four, five kilo [between eight and 11lbs]. 

“I wasn’t in a great headspace anyway. With the hunger on top and then being pissed off with the result and everything, I wasn’t the best person to be around for a while. Even though no one told me that, I definitely wasn’t the most enjoyable person to be around.”