Can Anthony Joshua contain his demons and shock the world in Daniel Dubois rematch?

Anthony Joshua is for now putting a brave face on his collapse at the feet of Daniel Dubois inside a busy Wembley Stadium. But in the days and weeks that follow, don’t doubt that the darkness will descend.

That natural sense of humiliation, the kind that demands the heartiest of soul searching, is surely in the post. What he remembers about the ordeal is likely mercifully little, but he won’t be able to avoid the evidence of his colossal fall. The splayed legs that he could not control as he clawed at the canvas, confused as to why he could not summon the strength to rise, were soon followed by online memes depicting the moment when he felt at his most hopeless. Defeat, thanks to social media, is crueller today than it’s been at any other point in boxing history.

Joshua, 34, has been beaten before, of course. Arguably the loss to Andy Ruiz Jr, in the summer of 2019, was more embarrassing. After all, his conqueror on the night of Joshua’s US debut was much shorter and looked like he’d never done a day of exercise in his whole life. But Joshua was not yet 30 years old, the difficult build up to that contest and the illness he’d endured were fresh in his mind. He could write that one off with victory in the rematch.

The losses to Oleksandr Usyk would have been tough to swallow, too. By then Joshua was trying to be the complete all-rounder, one who could both bang and box, only for Usyk – an older and wiser man, it turned out – to outbang and outbox him in consecutive bouts. Yet there were plenty who rightly applauded Joshua’s efforts and, years later, Joshua could find comfort in the knowledge that Usyk stood tall as the undisputable division leader and a puzzle, this all-time great in waiting, that nobody before or since has solved.

The loss to Dubois, however, came to a younger man he has felt superior to for a long time. Joshua never particularly rated Dubois, the young buck who’d dared to disrespect him, yet this is a man who can push out his chest and push back his shoulders and look just as imposing as Joshua looks when he does the same. Yet, unlike Joshua, he is enviably vacant when it comes to the pressures of the outside world. There is a simple, robotic quality to Dubois, one that can malfunction if he’s given too much time to process new surroundings or situations but one that is becoming increasingly effective when the instruction is simply to destroy. Dubois is still just 27, too – an age to be missed once you get past it. 

Joshua will remember being 27 years old. When he was blasting through all-comers without a care in the world, feeling invincible like only people in their mid-twenties can. It was the embracement of those feelings, as he strutted into press conferences as the biggest man in the room, as he politely bumped fists with mere mortals, that defined his rise through the ranks. The Olympic champion, the can’t-miss prospect, the gargantuan puncher, the hottest property in British sport. When Joshua turned 27 years old, he had not yet encountered Wladimir Klitschko. 

A lot has happened since then. 

It is everything that has happened since then, in fact, that makes it so difficult to see a way back for Joshua at the highest level, particularly if to reach that level he must again go through Dubois.

His performance in the first encounter was screaming for help. In the end, he simply didn’t know which way to turn. Only briefly energized when Dubois stumbled in round five, the subsequent desperation in Joshua’s work, to find the punch to end it all, was telling.

The uncertainty that has at times tainted Joshua’s in-ring approach since he went to hell and back with Klitschko is unlikely to have been eased by being bounced off the canvas, time and again, by a boxer who for so long lived in Joshua’s shadow and only recently threatened to come out.

Joshua’s plentiful qualities are unlikely to have disappeared without trace yet his shortcomings – the failure to believe in himself at crucial moments, the desire to go for broke at the wrong time, and the haphazard approach to the A-B-Cs of boxing – might only become more pronounced and the second guesses even wider of the mark. And that’s before we consider the heavy blows he’s taken, the concussions they’ve caused, and the ageing process that will soon dull his reflexes, slow his hands, and hack away at his punch resistance.

Yet it wouldn’t be a surprise if Joshua’s next fight was against the same man. After all, he followed the Ruiz loss with an immediate return, likewise the humbling defeat to Usyk. He has always relished a challenge, his career to date should still be deemed a generational success and the desire to prove everyone wrong will now be stronger than ever before. Whether that will be enough to put his hands in the right positions at the right times, to know when to defend and when to attack, and when to ignore the voices in his head, is unknown. But he needs to again become that fearless young man – just like the one who will stand in the opposite corner, even more confident, even more unnervingly cold. To overcome that would be a huge ask for anyone.

Joshua’s current record in sequels stands at 1-1, the success rate is still at 50/50, and that oft-referenced desire to ‘roll the dice’ may now seem like the best option for a man who is running out of time.