Warrior Spirit: Daniel Dubois sends Anthony Joshua a step closer to the garden

Implicit in the word “warrior” is an understanding that you are willing to suffer in the hope of prevailing. Call yourself one and you accept that things won’t always go your way and that you are not perfect, the suggestion being that experience has led you to believe this. Call yourself one and you are aware of what can happen and what is to come, sooner or later.

Before he lost for the fourth time in his professional career last night (September 21) at Wembley, Anthony Joshua was asked if he had had the chance to stop, look around, and “smell the roses”. He was at the time being interviewed on stage by Ariel Helwani, for DAZN, and had just weighed in, receiving in the process the acclaim of thousands of fans who had gathered in Trafalgar Square to watch him. In response to the question he had been asked, Joshua was to produce one of the more interesting lines in a fight week full of tired ones. He said, when asked about taking things for granted, “I’m not a warrior in the garden yet. I’m still on the battlefield. I’m not smelling any roses yet. Just blood. Fresh blood.”

It was, this response, equal parts scary and revealing. Said with a smile, it could not be mistaken for a Mike Tyson line, for it lacked either the severity or snarl, but still the idea of Joshua smelling blood – in the case of Daniel Dubois, fresh blood – served as good material for those cutting the fight-night promo. More than that, the image of warriors on battlefields or in gardens was another interesting angle to explore, particularly when during fight week Joshua had seemed so obsessed with the idea. If he wasn’t calling himself a warrior, he was calling himself a gladiator, and if he wasn’t reciting lines from films involving either warriors or gladiators, he was telling anybody who showed an interest in his airpod that his go-to songs were those from the Gladiator soundtrack. 

You might think that for a fighter this is nothing unusual, a natural progression after wearing out the Rocky soundtrack. Yet it could also be argued that an obsession with warrior mentality, and promoting it publicly, is often no more than an attempt at self-motivation, something many fighters, especially in their early days, do not have to go searching for. Not only that, there is a sense that Warrior is a fighter’s final state, not too far from their last stand. Perhaps to wear it as a badge therefore is as much a weakness as a strength. After all, even if it shows a willingness to go to that dark place, it is also an admission that at some point they may have no choice in the matter; an admission that physical regression, something inevitable, is now offset by courage and a readiness to dig in when necessary. In other words, they are saying to the world: “I know it gets no easier from this point on, but I am prepared for it, as all warriors are.”

Joshua, at the age of 34, is far from old. Yet he does, like all fighters, carry with him scars, both mental and physical. He had been beaten three times – once by Andy Ruiz, twice by Oleksandr Usyk – and during each of these defeats he found out things about himself he would have rather not known. Against Ruiz, for example, he found out how it feels to get hit, hurt, and stay hurt, as well as how it feels to see a man in inferior physical condition demonstrate elements, vital ones, Joshua himself lacked on the night. Against Usyk, meanwhile, he was shown all his technical limitations, not once but twice, and could afterwards no longer call himself, or even imagine himself, as an elite-level technician. He had, in this department, met his master and Joshua, as a result, almost had to redefine himself in his own mind. He had to take everything he had experienced in the company of Usyk, and indeed Ruiz, and decide what sort of fighter he was going to be as he entered his mid-thirties. Brutal knockouts of Otto Wallin and Francis Ngannou then duly followed and both would help encourage him to forget any pretence of being a great boxer and instead focus solely on what he does best: hitting people hard and early. With this approach came fresh excitement, too, as everybody looked only at the knockouts generated and not the person on the receiving end of them. There was suddenly talk of Joshua being new and improved. There was talk of another title run. 

Against Dubois, he was meant to be back, better than ever, they said. He was saying all the right things, pulling all the right faces, and the aim, it seemed, was control, intimidation. That could be seen whenever the two heavyweights came together and was something that had Joshua calling Dubois a “boy” during a heated head-to-head a couple of months back. It also led to Dubois walking to the ring first on the night, despite bringing with him an IBF belt. 

Dubois, for his part, was completely indifferent – always. This may just be his natural state, or simply his default factory setting, but there was certainly a vacancy, in both expression and thought, to Dubois that was entirely at odds with the approach of Joshua. Whereas for Joshua, you see, everything is considered, and analysed to the point of paralysis, the mind of Dubois is pure and simple. It asks nothing of him; neither answers nor energy. 

This was apparent throughout fight week. It then became even more apparent during the first round of the fight when the two boxers’ demeanours could not have been any more different. It was, in that moment, as if only one of them had been informed of the fight’s start time, with the other, Joshua, not yet prepared for the sight of a man his physical equal marching towards him throwing stiff jabs, his expression fixed. Already, as early as the first round, it was clear this would not be the fight most expected. Already, with Dubois showing a superior jab and better form, there was a feeling that Joshua would have to find something big, and early, just to gain his fellow Londoner’s respect and remind him of the hierarchy. 

However, if things like hierarchy, power, and respect weigh heavily on a mind like Joshua’s, they mean nothing to Daniel Dubois. His brain, in fact, operates at a completely different speed and on a completely different level and this difference was what allowed him to roll forward, snap out punches, and produce big moments against Joshua, including knockdowns in rounds one and three, yet never become emotionally invested in these moments or even consider what they meant. It was, to him, just what he had to do; what he had been programmed to do. “No words, just punches,” he said to Sky Sports this week. 

In terms of those, the jab was the key to everything, as always it is, and the right hand then did a lot of the irreparable damage. One in the first round hurt Joshua badly – from this he arguably never recovered – and after that it became easier and easier for Dubois to find a home for this shot. Whenever he did, Joshua appeared flustered at best, afraid at worst, and Dubois, like a parasite, fed off these shifts in emotion and momentum. Indeed, when you get down to it, that is perhaps the only language Dubois understands; the only one in which he can properly converse. He hits someone; they show distress; he then hits them some more until he is told he must stop. Working like this, Dubois is suddenly as fluent as anyone. Almost a genius, in fact. 

Joshua, on the other hand, was now feeling both his shoulders and his head getting only heavier. Filled now with memories, all the ones he tried to suppress, he knew beyond any doubt that he not only needed to now present as a warrior but that this option was maybe the only one available to him. Gone at this stage were any dreams of outboxing Dubois or “old-manning” him after putting him in his place in round one. Now the only option for Joshua was to survive and hope that Dubois’ youthful exuberance would lead to him running out of steam. Now the only option was to suck it up and suffer. 

Dubois, in all this, seemed the more natural fighter of the two. Technically he was superior, with him always in position to throw and his jab a revelation, but he was also now doing the instinctive things better than Joshua, who has for so long had a propensity to think too much before doing. Physically, too, Dubois, at 27, looked the better off. His frame was larger, his back broader, and he could push Joshua around, often positioning him for his left hook before throwing it. This he did in round three, the round in which Dubois rocked Joshua in the final seconds and Marcus McDonnell, the referee, picked up the count after the bell (having noticed Joshua sit on the bottom rope). The fight, in truth, could have ended there. 

It didn’t, however. Instead, Dubois continued his onslaught in round four and Joshua invested everything he had left in a single shot, a right uppercut, which he threw with blind faith whenever possible. 

“We get through this,” said Ben Davison, Joshua’s coach, between rounds.

“100 per cent,” said Joshua.

“Fucking warrior sprit.”

“100 per cent.”

They knew they were entering it, I suppose: that territory, that dark place. They knew what was to come and they knew that Joshua, in adopting a warrior mentality, would now have to prepare himself for it and do what was required. This meant biting down on his gum shield and taking whatever Dubois threw at him. It also meant keeping faith in his power and his own right hand, which he did, soon landing his biggest shot of the fight in the very round in which the fight would ultimately end. 

There were three of them, in fact; three right hands thrown one after another. The first was enough to buckle Dubois’ legs, turning the fight on its head, while the next two, the second and third, did two key things. One, they forced Dubois to retreat, and two, they gave Dubois a glimmer of hope; or an opportunity to land his own. 

His own, a punch whose power was doubled on account of Joshua rushing forward, was shorter than Joshua’s. It was also both softer than many of the previous ones Dubois had landed and, crucially, better placed, the tip of it cracking Joshua’s jaw and sending him to the canvas, headfirst. 

No more punches were needed. Nor, despite the refereeing issuing one, was there the need for a count. 

“I’ve only got a few things to say,” said Dubois afterwards, surprising no one. “Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?”

Yes, he had done it. He had not only slayed Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium, but he had then used his very ethos against him, stealing a line from Gladiator to remind the world that there were two warriors in the colosseum that night. If it had been said by any other fighter, it could have been considered a slight, or a cheeky dig on the victory lap, yet in the case of Dubois, 22-2 (21), it is far more likely that it was both the first and only thing that came to his mind in that moment. “I’m a gladiator,” he added, “a warrior to the bitter end. I want to go to the top and reach my potential.”

As for Joshua, 28-4 (25), if he still intends to assume the warrior lifestyle and mindset, he can perhaps find solace in a different line from Gladiator. Try this one from Maximus, for example: “Nothing happens to anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear.” Or, if not that, he can always be comforted by something Gracchus said, which, in boxing terms, is very much the warrior’s elegy: “There is always someone left to fight.”