David Haye: ‘New Anthony Joshua would batter old Joshua in a round’

David Haye believes that Daniel Dubois is in for a tough Saturday night as he stated the current version of Anthony Joshua would knock out the old version in a round.

Joshua faces Dubois in an all-British IBF heavyweight fight this Saturday at Wembley Stadium. This will be Joshua’s first title fight since losing his rematch with Oleksandr Usyk in 2022 after initially losing his belts to the Ukrainian a year earlier.

Joshua came under a lot of criticism after those defeats and that continued after two lackluster performances to Jermaine Franklin and Robert Helenius. This prompted him to make a switch to Tyson Fury’s former trainer Ben Davison ahead of his contest with Otto Walin. Davison was also in the corner for Joshua’s fight against Francis Ngannou. The former champion was heavily praised for his performances under Davison, stopping both his men inside the scheduled distance – something his fierce rival Fury could not do.

Haye, a former heavyweight champion himself, also fought in an all-British battle when he defended his WBA heavyweight title against Audley Harrison in 2013 – stopping him in the third round. Haye believes that Joshua’s two defeats to Usyk and his subsequent switch to trainer Davison have helped evolve him as a fighter and that this current version is the best one yet.

“I never thought Anthony Joshua was finished,” Haye told William Hill. “Some people just need to learn from getting it wrong – not everyone is like Oleksandr Usyk who gets it right every time.

“AJ is a much better fighter now having lost those two fights than he would’ve been if he’d won – he’s learnt from his mistakes. The new Anthony Joshua would smoke the old Anthony Joshua in one round, plain and simple. Everything is strategized and sequenced now, and that’s the Ben Davison effect. He’s starting to understand his strengths and implement them.

“Stylistically and technically, Joshua is superior but, up until he started working with Ben Davison, he didn’t mould his style around his strengths,” he continued. “He’s now got some pre-determined punch sequences that are absolutely devastating, he just waits for the right time until he needs to pull the trigger – then people go to sleep.”

Dubois picked up the biggest win of his career last time out against Filip Hrgovic, a victory that later saw him elevated to IBF boss when Usyk relinquished. Dubois took big shots early on from Hrgovic but battled it out to stop the Croatian in the eighth round.

Haye believes that Dubois is in for a ‘tough time’ if he shows up on Saturday with the same attitude and takes heavy shots off Joshua early.

“If the version of Daniel Dubois who fought Filip Hrgovic turns up against AJ on Saturday who was eating right hands all night, I think he’ll have a really tough time,” said Haye. “He’s got a great chin though, no one can question that.”