What’s fresh and what’s old is out of style?In front of a potentially record-breaking crowd at Wembley Stadium on September 21, Anthony Joshua will take on Daniel Dubois in what might be considered the biggest British heavyweight bout since Frank Bruno vs. Lennox Lewis in 1993. There should be fireworks since the two Londoners have a combined knockout ratio of more than 90% and have only lost six of their 54 contests.
On September 21, Anthony Joshua (left) and Daniel Dubois (right) will square off at Wembley.
At the tender age of 19, Dubois turned down a spot on the 2020 Great British Olympic squad to focus only on heavyweight boxing. He is endowed with explosive power, having won 20 of his 21 bouts via knockout.His mental toughness is still in doubt, though, considering that he suffered a cracked left eye socket from a hard shot from Joyce in his first professional loss. Regarding his reason for leaving the ring, Dubois’s promoter Frank Warren stated that following the fight, doctors had informed him that if he had continued, he might have suffered irreversible eye damage.
Speaking to TNT Sports shortly after the fight, Warren said: ‘There was bleeding of the retina. So he basically risked a detached retina. He did the right thing.’
Dubois took a knee during his first defeat by Joe Joyce in November 2020.
A acceptable answer for the average person, but not for fighters, who rushed to social media to openly criticize Dubois.
Matthew Macklin, a former middleweight world title challenger and pundit, tweeted shortly after the fight: ‘There’s no good way to describe it, but Dubois quit. I got hit with a clean jab on a wounded eye and sat out. He’s young, but if you’re a quitter, you’ll always have doubts about him.
Rival promoter Eddie Hearn, who also promotes Joshua, speculated on Instagram that Dubois’ corner team didn’t trust the strength of their fighter’s mentality, saying: ‘I think it was about the fourth or fifth round I thought, “He don’t fancy this”.
‘He went to the corner and the corner team were saying things like, “Come on! This is the fight game!”
‘I thought, “Calm down, it’s only the fourth round.” And I think they just knew he was mentally weak. I’m not sure?’
As for Dubois’ take, in an interview with TNT Sports immediately after the fight when asked what had happened, he responded: ‘What can I say he caught me with a good jab and his jab was pretty accurate and you know I couldn’t see out the eye.’
He did very few interviews in the weeks that followed on from the fight, but speaking in an interview months later with Frank Warren’s Queensberry promotions YouTube Channel he said: ‘I took a knee and the rest is history, but after all that, I’m not going to let this stop me, set me back, hold me back.’
‘When I come back, I want to see them same people and I want to get in the ring with them, and show them how much of a quitter I am.’
Dubois also took a knee in his second career loss to Oleksandr Usyk last year
Usyk controversially complained of a low blow before going on to stop Dubois
Joshua has previously faced quitting claims after losing to Andy Ruiz Jr. in 2019, but has since proven his mettle.
Dubois did come back and win four straight knockouts before meeting the undefeated Oleksandr Usyk over three years after the Joyce bout.
Despite giving a reasonably solid account of himself during the fight, including dropping Usyk with a punch that was controversially considered a low shot, some suspected that Dubois had deliberately remained on one knee and accepted the count after going down in the ninth round. While only Dubois knows for sure, the question marks remain.
He put some of these misgivings to rest by going to the trenches in June to defeat Filip Hrgovic, a world-class fighter listed among Ring Magazine’s top ten heavyweights. It remains to be seen whether this victory demonstrates Dubois’ true resolve to overcome his previous defeats.
Perhaps Dubois could turn the tables on Joshua, who was accused of ‘quitting’ by Simon Jordan after spatting out his gum shield in the seventh round of his US debut against Andy Ruiz Jr. in Madison Square Garden, before being counted out in his first professional loss.
Whilst Dubois’ defensive sđđŸđđs have looked shaky at times, there is no doubt that he has the power to knock out any heavyweight should he land cleanly. Could this fight be a case of who lands first wins?
Given the explosive power of both fighters, the opportunity to ‘quit’ may not even present itself as the fight could be over with one punch.
Dubois has bounced back from his losses and beat Filip Hrgovic impressively in June
He can defeat Joshua at Wembley to demonstrate that he has conquered his mental problems.
Joshua might put the younger man’s stomach for the fight to the test once more if he chooses to back off in the opening exchanges and methodically counterattack Dubois’s blows with the jab, much like he did with Joyce.
However, Dubois has a great potential to defeat AJ and establish himself as the heavyweight division’s future leader if he can demonstrate that he is over these mental obstacles.
