Gareth A. Davies believes Anthony Joshua’s legacy is in a mess after having the stuffing beaten out of him by Daniel Dubois in an embarrassing fifth-round knockout last Saturday night.
Joshua’s career is essentially over unless he avenges the defeat, which doesn’t look promising. He was quiet after the fight about whether to use his rematch clause to force a second fight against Dubois. Hearn spoke about potentially exercising the rematch clause, but his facial expression didn’t look convincing.
Legacy-wise, Joshua’s resume does not stand out. His best win was against 41-year-old Wladimir Klitschko, who had retired and was not the same guy due to his age and the absence of his trainer, Emanuel Steward. He passed away five years earlier, in 2012.
Joshua and Hearn will likely decide against taking the rematch with Dubois and focus on going after the sure-thing guaranteed payday fight that His Excellency Turki Alalshikh wants.
With the fight being financed by Turki, it doesn’t matter if it fails to bring in the money it would have if both fighters were winning and still at the top of their games. AJ’s career has been well managed from the very start in 2013, and there’s no chance he’ll be steered into a dangerous rematch that he has little chance of winning against Dubois.
If Joshua is going to win the rematch, he’ll have to make some major changes to his fight strategy, physical conditioning, and training team. Where AJ is now, he won’t beat Dubois in a rematch.
Joshua (28-4, 23 KOs) was the favorite to win by the oddsmakers and the boxing public, who gave IBF heavyweight champion Dubois (22-2, 21 KOs) almost no chance. They viewed this as just another night at the office for AJ and were fooled by how impressive he’d looked in his previous four performances.
“You have to praise Anthony Joshua for hanging on after his world was ripped out from underneath him in the last 20 seconds of the first round by that overhand right,” said Gareth A. Davies to talkSport Boxing, discussing how things went downhill fast for Anthony Joshua after being clipped by Daniel Dubois in the first round last Saturday.
“How he hung on until the fifth round and almost rescued victory from the jaws of defeat it’s almost beyond any of us. It leaves Anthony Joshua’s legacy in a mess at the moment, and where he goes in the future is very uncertain.
Davies mentioned how Joshua almost “rescued victory from the jaws of defeat” in the fifth round after he landed one punch but was down face-first on the canvas seconds later. Promoter Eddie Hearn says Joshua got too “greedy” then and went for the finish when he should have been more calculated.
“Last night, it was the AJ show because the champion [Dubois] walked first, which is unusual as well. He was treated like the A-side as well, walking out. I picked Joshua to win. I thought he had the wherewithal to do it, but he never recovered after being hit by that right hand in the first round,” said Gareth.
The fight was basically over in the first round after Dubois hurt Joshua with a right-hand haymaker thrown from a long distance in the final 20 seconds. Joshua thought he was out of range of Dubois’ punches but didn’t consider his ability to launch a missile from that far out. The punch nailed Joshua on the chin, sending him down. Joshua fought defensively, throwing very few punches in rounds 2, 3, 4, and 5.
“He didn’t execute his game plan. He came up against a young man who wanted to beat him in a duel, and he lost in a duel. They’re both big, explosive punchers. He didn’t produce last night. Look at the punch stats.
“He threw 117 punches in those five rounds and landed 32 because he was in survival mode for most of it. He got beaten up. This is the first time he was beaten up. This was a one-sided drubbing,” said Gareth about Joshua.
It looked like Joshua was in a ‘Last Stand’ type of battle situation, outmanned and underequipped with his offensive firepower. He’d left his Gatling gun behind and was armed with only single-shot weapons. Joshua couldn’t fight that kind of battle against a powerful fighter with the type of cardio and high-pressure offense that Dubois had.
What a night of boxing 🤩Presented by @autozone 🥊#JoshuaDubois pic.twitter.com/LVe830vlQk
— DAZN Boxing (@DAZNBoxing) September 21, 2024
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