Joshua Buatsi Floored Willy Hutchinson Twice — and One Judge Still Gave Hutchinson the Fight

Wembley, September 2024. Joshua Buatsi put Willy Hutchinson on the canvas in the sixth round. He did it again in the ninth. When the scorecards came back, two judges saw the fight the way everybody else did — 117-108 and 115-110 for Buatsi. The third judge scored it 113-112 for Hutchinson.

Read that again. The man who got dropped twice nearly won the fight on the cards.

Buatsi left with the WBO interim light-heavyweight title and the win on his record. Hutchinson left asking for a rematch in the changing room. On Saturday night at the AO Arena in Manchester, live on DAZN, he finally gets it — and what started as a run-back for an interim belt is now for the whole thing. David Benavidez vacated the WBC light-heavyweight championship to campaign at cruiserweight, and the WBC upgraded this rematch to a fight for the vacant full title. Somebody is leaving Manchester a world champion.

Neither man took a straight line back here. Buatsi, 33, the Rio 2016 Olympic bronze medallist from London by way of Accra, ran into Callum Smith in February 2025 and lost for the first time as a professional, a unanimous decision in a fight good enough that nobody held it against him for long. He steadied himself with a decision over Zach Parker last November and kept his place near the front of the queue — No. 3 with the WBC, No. 5 with The Ring. His record stands at 20-1 with 13 knockouts.

Hutchinson, from Carstairs, Scotland, is 20-2 with 14 knockouts, ranked No. 6 by the WBC and No. 7 by The Ring. He rebuilt the honest way: a seventh-round stoppage of Mark Jeffers last October, then a wide unanimous decision over Ezra Taylor in March, on cards of 99-91, 98-92 and 98-92. He has been telling anybody who will listen that Buatsi only took this fight because a world title is attached to it. "If the truth be known, he wouldn't have fought me unless it was for the world title," Hutchinson said at this week's final press conference in Manchester. Buatsi's answer was short: "Bullied into it by who? By him? No."

Strip the talk away and the matchup still sells itself. Buatsi is the controller — patient, heavy-handed, comfortable running a fight at his pace, and he proved at Wembley he can shake Hutchinson out of his rhythm when he chooses to press. Hutchinson is the energy — busy, awkward, convinced the first fight was closer than the knockdowns made it look, and in a sense the third judge agreed with him. Twelve rounds, scheduled. The first one needed every one of them.

What to watch for: whether Buatsi goes looking for the knockdown early this time instead of letting rounds bank up and judges get creative. He knows better than anyone what a creative judge can do — he lived it. And whether Hutchinson's two wins since Wembley were a real level-up or just the right opponents at the right time. Saturday tells us.

Both men made weight on Friday — Buatsi at 174.9 pounds, Hutchinson at 174.5 — and faced off for the final time without a shove. The card, billed "A Point 2 Prove" by Queensberry Promotions, streams on DAZN with the main-event ring walks expected around 10 p.m. in Manchester — 5 p.m. Eastern. Two years, two knockdowns and one scorecard nobody could explain. This time there's a belt to settle it.