The elterweight Paddy Donovan believes teammate Joseph Parker will defeat Daniel Dubois.
Parker faces IBF titleholder Dubois on February 22 in Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The bout is a part of a star-studded pay-per-view card featuring various hotly anticipated fights.
Donovan, 26, has his own big fight a week later against Lewis Crocker on March 1 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Donovan, who calls himself a realist, believes Parker will hold another title in a few days. The two spent training camp together in Saudi Arabia, sharing the same trainer in Andy Lee.
“Look, I’m fair and very honest,” Donovan told BoxingScene. “Even if he’s a part of our camp, if I don’t think he’s going to win, I’d be straight up and honest. I think Joe is going to beat him.”
Donovan, 26, from Limerick, Ireland, believes that for most of Parker’s career he got away with bad habits due to his talent. Now, Donovan says, Parker is continuing to improve based on changes Donovan has witnessed first-hand.
“He became a world champion at age 24, but he never lived the life,” Donovan said. “He never was consistent. He was just running off natural talent. I think Joe Parker wasn’t disciplined. He wasn’t really giving it his all in training. He had a lot of errors, but for the last four to five fights under Andy [Lee], he’s changed his game completely.”
Donovan also noted that George Lockhart, a well-known nutritionist, is working with Parker. Since being stopped by Joe Joyce in 2022, Parker, 35-3 (23 KOs), has won five consecutive fights – including impressive performances in wins over Deontay Wilder and Zhilei Zhang.
For his part, Dubois, 27, has also reinvented himself. After being stopped by Joyce in 2020, London’s Dubois won four straight fights – and then was stopped by Oleksandr Usyk. In that fight, a questionable low blow was ruled to be a foul and, after the call, Dubois never mentally re-entered the fight.
But since the loss to Usyk, Dubois, 22-2 (21 KOs), has stopped Jarrell Miller, Filip Hrgovic and Anthony Joshua. After his most recent stretch of fights, Dubois could hold the claim for being the hardest-hitting active heavyweight.
“I believe people think they’ve seen the best of Joe Parker, but I don’t,” Donovan said. “Honestly, I think Joe is actually getting better. I think that’s going to be the difference between him and Dubois. I think Dubois thinks that Joe’s been there. He has fought Joshua. He’s fought Chisora. They think he’s fought all these fighters and he’s on the decline. I think he’s not. Joe is on the rise in his career.”
Lucas Ketelle took an unconventional path to boxing, eventually finding his stride in gyms and media. For the past decade, he has hosted the “Lukie Boxing” podcast, filmed training camps for fighters like Arnold Barboza Jnr, Mikey Garcia and Caleb Plant, and worked with top professionals such as Mike Bazzel. Ketelle is also an author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for ProBox TV, BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @LukieBoxing.
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