In December 2020, Anthony Joshua made the first defense of his second reign as unified heavyweight champion with a ninth round stoppage of Kubrat Pulev.
A month earlier, the pain of a badly broken eye socket and the accuracy of Joe Joyce’s jab had proven to be too much for Daniel Dubois and the young heavyweight prospect sank to his haunches and allowed the referee to count him out.
Back then, a world title fight between Joshua and Dubois seemed a distant dream. It became even more remote after Oleksandr Usyk wreaked havoc on both men’s careers. The Ukrainian comprehensively outpointed Joshua to take his heavyweight titles and then repeated the trick in a rematch. Last August, Usyk stopped Dubois in nine rounds.
The heavyweight division has been built on shifting sands since Saudi Arabian money began to pour into the sport. But even those who claim to have foreseen a future title fight between the two Brits would stretch their credibility to breaking point by claiming to have predicted that it would happen so quickly and snap it completely if they added that Joshua would leave his dressing room first and wait for the champion, Dubois, to make his way to the ring.
Political maneuvering means that Usyk won’t get the chance to defend the undisputed title he won by beating Tyson Fury in May. It also means that on September 21st, Dubois, 21-2 (20 KOs) will defend his newly awarded IBF heavyweight title against Joshua, 28-3 (25 KOs) in front of around 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium.
Eight years after destroying Charles Martin to win the same IBF belt, Joshua, 34, gets the chance to become a three-time champion and – once again – he is the challenger.
“The management team worked hard with negotiations and, for me, it’s like a cherry on top. It’s a big bonus,” Joshua told Steve Bunce on the 5 Live Boxing Podcast. “The IBF are gonna do what they do. They wanna force their mandatories and Usyk has a rematch with [Tyson] Fury so Daniel’s now the IBF champion so I’m just coming in as a challenger. I’m not fighting for a vacant title, I’m coming in as a challenger for the title.”
“I knew it would happen at some stage,” he said about walking to the ring first. “When I fought Dillian [Whyte] I said he can go second. It’s all about who walks out last, right? For me, it doesn’t matter who is first in the ring.”
Dubois’ transformation over the past six months has been incredible. After being dismissed as a fearsome but fragile puncher after taking a knee against Joyce and sitting out the count against Usyk, Dubois has notched up two excellent stoppage victories and reinvented himself as a mentally solid, robust pressure fighter. If he was good against Jarrell Miller, he was outstanding against Filip Hrgovic.
Joshua was written off himself after a shocking defeat to Andy Ruiz in 2019.
Just six months later, Joshua outboxed a poorly prepared Ruiz to regain his belts but rebuilding the aura he lost when the shocking images of the talented but rotund Mexican-American standing over him flashed around the world took much longer.
There have been some shaky moments and a carousel of different trainers but Joshua stuck to his task and has slowly but surely built confidence and momentum since his second defeat to Usyk.
He appears to have rediscovered himself since settling down and starting work with Ben Davison and looked somewhere near his best when dismantling Otto Wallin last December. He then brutalized MMA star turned boxer, Francis Ngannou, inside two rounds in March. Still, critics will continue to question Joshua’s chin and stamina for as long as he continues to fight.
Joshua is ideally placed to know exactly what Dubois has been through. That perspective has allowed him to concentrate on the clear and present danger that the 26-year-old Londoner possesses.
“He’s a fighter. That’s what he does, he fights. People paint people with brushes all the time in this industry but I think Dubois is a fighter at the end of the day,” Joshua said. “That’s what he does. He had a few tough nights. He had something like 20 good nights and two bad nights and they label him with that brush.
“I look past that and I know he’s a fighter at the end of the day. He’s coming.”
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