If it is rightly often recognized that fighters make trainers and rarely the reverse, then of the many ways a trainer can earn credit or be criticized, perhaps leading their fighters to victories considered beyond them is the most significant of all.
Don Charles, in so many respects, took on the most thankless of tasks when he was recruited to train Daniel Dubois. The heavyweight had not only split from the respected Shane McGuigan, under whose guidance he ultimately appeared to be making progress, his confidence had again suffered when he was so very nearly stopped before recording victory over Kevin Lerena in December 2022. He was then matched with the great Oleksandr Usyk, and had to travel to Poland to fight the finest, and perhaps most intelligent, active fighter in the world.
Usyk, almost inevitably, won. Instead of them then being given time to rebuild, the undefeated Jarrell Miller – considered good enough to be matched with the then-undefeated IBF, WBA and WBO champion Anthony Joshua in 2019 – was installed as Dubois’ next opponent. Dubois defied the expectations of many observers to record his most impressive win, and was then matched with the dangerous, undefeated Filip Hrgovic in an occasion for which he was widely considered the underdog. If, with the benefit of hindsight, Dubois had long proven himself to have the necessary qualities to defeat Miller, Hrgovic – in June, and therefore in Dubois’ first fight of 2024 – represented a considerably riskier test.
It is little secret Matchroom had matched Hrgovic with Dubois in an attempt to build him as the next opponent for Joshua. It is similarly little secret that the stoppage defeats Dubois suffered, by Joe Joyce in 2020 and Usyk in August 2023, meant that his rivals had come to regard him as psychologically fragile. Under the paternal Charles, however, Dubois perhaps overcame the biggest test of his heart since that against Joyce (he was on course for defeat by Usyk, regardless of how he responded to the pressure he was under) to transform what had become a difficult contest into one in which he eventually started to bully the bully, and impressively became the first to stop Hrgovic, as he did in the eighth round.
Matched with Joshua, and installed as the IBF champion on the eve of their fight being officially announced – he admirably said that he would consider himself the champion if he defeated Joshua, and not before then – under the harshest of spotlights he was again regarded as the significant underdog. Despite Dubois also being the champion, it was Joshua who walked to the ring second; it was also Joshua who Tyson Fury was ringside to watch, in the expectation that a fight between them could finally follow in 2025. Even more apparent than Matchroom’s plans to make Joshua-Hrgovic was the wider desire for the stage to be provided for Fury-Joshua – and the renewed belief that existed in Joshua as a consequence of his re-energized performances in his two fights under Ben Davison.
Post-fight, it has become easy to forget that rumors existed throughout fight week that Charles had been sacked by Dubois’ apparently-controlling father Dave. It has also become easy to forget the extent to which Joshua had been the favorite – and how deafeningly it has become tempting to interpret Joshua’s silence regarding a rematch. Dubois – in a way not seen in Joshua’s three previous defeats by the impressive Andy Ruiz Jnr and, twice, the masterful Usyk – beat Joshua up for five rounds and made him look like a fighter who had declined significantly until the moment he was stopped.
Twice Dubois entered the ring expected to lose, and twice he emphatically succeeded. His natural athleticism and explosive qualities meant he had long had the potential to be a fine heavyweight, but under Charles – and more recently the padman Kieran Farrell, whose atypical role Charles has been comfortable with – that potential is being realized. Charles is passionate, protective and loyal to the extent he will forever struggle to resist his partisan instincts, but his self-belief and belief in Dubois has contributed to transforming Dubois’ self-belief – ensuring a once very promising young heavyweight is coming of age.
Honorable mentions: Sergey Lapin and Robert Garcia
That 2024 was the year in which Usyk transformed his reputation from one of the world’s two finest heavyweights and a pound-for-pound contender to the very finest in both categories and an all-time great, and when Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez came to be seen as one of his potential successors as the world’s finest active fighter, means that their trainers Sergey Lapin and Robert Garcia also deserve considerable credit.
The first of Usyk’s victories over Fury owed so much to his self-belief and ability to adapt, but he looked exhausted at the halfway stage against a considerably bigger opponent, and would not have been able to transform that fight without being correctly conditioned. The second owed partly to his being six pounds lighter than during the first fight, as a consequence of their recognizing that Fury would come in so much heavier in an attempt to force a significantly more physical fight. Both, clearly, owe much to Lapin.
Unlike with Usyk and Lapin, Garcia has guided Rodriguez from the status of promising young fighter to one of the finest and most devastating in the world. He proved himself its leading flyweight at the conclusion of 2023 when stopping the previously undefeated Sunny Edwards, and then proceeded to similarly convincingly stop Juan Francisco Estrada and Pedro Guevara in a combined 10 rounds in 2024.
There, increasingly, exist observers who, outside of the triumvirate of Usyk, Terence Crawford and Naoya Inoue, consider Rodriguez the world’s finest active fighter – even after seeing Artur Beterbiev defeat Dmitry Bivol to become the undisputed champion at 175lbs. Garcia has also, similarly notably, overseen Vergil Ortiz Jnr’s impressive progress at 154lbs, after a career-threatening condition brought on by long Covid forced him to move up from 147lbs, and to the extent that on February 22 he will fight Israil Madrimov, who so recently provided Crawford with so difficult a test.
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