LONDON, England — Oleksandr Usyk will attempt to continue his campaign of Great British domination at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night, but it actually began in far more inauspicious circumstances around 200 miles north nearly 18 years ago.

This weekend, Usyk takes on Daniel Dubois for the second time in what will be the Ukrainian’s first outing beneath the arch of the National Stadium in the north west of England's capital. The fight will stream live on DAZN PPV.

The Ring heavyweight champion touched down on these shores this week 7-0, 2 KOs against Brits, with those two inside distance victories coming against Tony Bellew and Dubois himself.

In fact, Saturday will be his seventh straight fight against a British heavyweight with the run, including Derek Chisora, Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury (both twice), as well as his first win over Dubois, also gleaning all four world heavyweight belts at one time or another.

But rewind even further and you’ll find that the UK was always a happy hunting ground for Usyk. In 2008, on his first visit, he won the European amateur championships up in Liverpool, racking up five wins and taking home gold — although the only confrontation with a Brit that time came outside the ring — and outside the arena altogether. A smile flashes across his face when he is reminded of the trip.

“I really remember that one very well,” Usyk tells The Ring. “Mainly because I stayed in a very big hotel.

“Anyway, when I won that tournament we walked back to the hotel, but it was raining badly.

“I noticed there was one young woman sitting on the floor in the rain. She was drunk, maybe it was a Saturday, but she was sitting close to the hotel on the floor with five of her friends.

“I said, 'hey, what are you doing? Get up, it’s a problem, it’s raining.'

“Then this woman, still sitting on the floor, did this,” he says, raising his middle finger, “and said: ‘[Expletive] off!’

“I didn’t know what to say so I just said, 'OK,' and walked away.”

That moment remains the first and only time Usyk walked away from a fight here. Four years after that sojourn to Liverpool, Usyk was back in Britain, this time to compete at the London 2012 Olympic Games as a 91kg heavyweight. He secured three more wins in London, with one of them coming against future undisputed light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev, en route to gold. Then, in March 2013, only a few miles from the venue where he became Olympic champion, Usyk beat his first Brit — outpointing Joe Joyce in a World Series of Boxing fixture on a famous night at York Hall. Elsewhere on the card, Vasyl Lomachenko defeated Sam Maxwell.

That was 12 years ago. Lomachenko has since been and gone as a professional while the future of Joyce, who later claimed Olympic silver, is unclear following a run of four defeats in his last five outings. He is 39.

But Usyk fights on. He has made no secret that this may well be his penultimate fight, with a glorious Ukrainian homecoming planned before he hangs them up at some point in 2026, but he is not done yet. Fighting at Wembley will be another box checked while victory will anoint him history’s first two-time, four-belt heavyweight champion.

On that first trip to Liverpool, he celebrated winning gold by heading to an underground drum and bass rave in the city. He also went on a shopping spree of sorts. “I bought some T-shirts,” he says. “Everlast, Lonsdale, I felt like a really cool guy.”

But, now 38, things are different; his kids have been joining him during his recent training camps as he has no intention of leaving them for weeks on end anymore. He has had a number of training bases over the years, but the addition of motivational phrases to the walls have been a mainstay. Before he beat Fury, one read: “Newton’s Cradle has already started.”

He laughs again. “That just meant the game has started," he says.

“But this slogan will always stay deep within me but my mind has changed and I’ve changed the way I think.

“Over the years I have changed my training and I have changed generally because I have grown. I have got to know more, I have learned more so I have changed.

“Now in camp, my slogans are, 'Look mum, I can fly’ or my son will say ‘Papa, it’s hard’, and I’ll say, 'No, it’s easy.'"

At times, he has made fighting and winning against British fighters look exactly that, but it is now up to Dubois to make him feel old overnight.