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He entered the ring as both the world heavyweight champion and the underdog at the end of a week where he was certainly not the star attraction.
Daniel Dubois changed the heavyweight landscape on Saturday night at Wembley Stadium when he dropped Anthony Joshua four times in a heavyweight fight for the ages.
Dubois was too fast, too smart and before the dramatic single-shot finish in the fifth round, he had bullied Joshua during a fight that few in the boxing business had dreamed would happen, with “AJ” forced to clarify his future due to the nature of the loss.
An exuberant Dubois asked the remnants of the 96,000 crowd during his post-fight interview in the ring: “Were you not entertained?” Joshua had slipped away, his eyes wide open to the disaster of the night and his future as uncertain as his legs had been unsteady for most of the fight. He will continue, there might even be a rematch.
The night belonged to Dubois, and it was, it needs to be said, an unlikely coronation. He called himself the “king slayer” and there is no arguing with that, but his passage to glory has been hard and his four-knockdown slugfest was not an easy prediction.
Dubois turned professional in 2017, he was just 19 at that time and there was a lot of pressure on him. The storyline was simple: he would be the next heavyweight champion of the world. He easily biffed and bashed his way to 14 knockouts in 15 wins and an early showdown with Joe Joyce, who had won an Olympic silver medal. The unbeaten pair met late in 2020, under Covid conditions behind closed doors, and Dubois, with an eye closed from punishment, went down on a knee in round 10 of 12. It was a shocking end and there is no easy way to disguise the finish. It was a crisis – the response would be critical.
After a few easy wins, including a mad dash to Florida to win a version of the world title, Dubois was matched with a former cruiserweight from South Africa called Kevin Lerena. It was outdoors at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on the night Tyson Fury stopped Derek Chisora. Dubois won in the third but was stunningly dropped three times in the opening round. The truth is, it looked like Fury and Joshua, and the rest of the elite heavyweights were operating far above his head.
In the summer of 2023, Dubois was stopped by Oleksandr Usyk in Poland in a heavyweight title fight that created more questions than answers. Usyk was dropped heavily by a body shot – yet the referee deemed it illegal; Dubois and his people believed it legitimate. Usyk took the extra minutes to “recover”. A few rounds later, Dubois was down on a knee after a jab. It was an unsatisfactory ending.
The controversy of the low-blow incident neatly shielded attention away from the dubious ending. However, Frank Warren, Dubois’s promoter, had to have a serious talk with the boxer. There would be no more gentle fights to get easy wins; it would be sink or swim. The choice was his to make and he accepted two fights against unbeaten boxers in Saudi Arabia, starting both as the underdog.
Last December, Dubois stopped Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller in the tenth and last round, and then in June, he halted Filip Hrgovic on cuts in the eighth round. In both fights, Dubois had to show tremendous resilience and courage. “It’s my redemption story,” he said after stopping Hrgovic and winning the IBF’s interim heavyweight title; a month later, he was upgraded to full champion and that belt was on the line against Joshua.
On Saturday night, the knockdowns of Joshua were impressive, but not as impressive as the way Dubois controlled and pushed Joshua from corner to corner. Dubois fought like the seasoned veteran and even at the end, when he had been caught and backed into a corner, there was no panic. As Joshua moved in, connecting with two big rights, Dubois picked an opening for a single, sharp counter and down went Joshua for the full count. It was a chilling finish, beautifully constructed under pressure from a man who has been under pressure since that first professional fight.
Dubois has now answered all the questions from the bad nights; the rest of his career will be his proper history.
