Anthony Joshua is aiming to become boxing’s fifth three-time heavyweight champion when he challenges newly-crowned IBF champion Daniel Dubois at Wembley Stadium in what will be the third all-British heavyweight world title bout in as many years. Now, Beijing 2008 medallist and former British and Commonwealth champion David Price has offered his verdict.
Both ‘AJ’ and Dubois have emerged as resurgent figures in the heavyweight scene, each bouncing back from public criticism to silence their doubters with impressive back-to-back stoppage wins and climbing to the peak of the division.
Joshua was scolded by the masses for his tentative approach in perceived one-sided contests against Jermaine Franklin and Robert Helenius but the appointment of former Tyson Fury trainer Ben Davison has resulted in a marked improvement.
The former unified champion overcame tricky Swedish southpaw Otto Wallin in a ruthless display before obliterating UFC sensation Francis Ngannou in just two rounds – both of those opponents having previously taken Fury the distance.
Meanwhile, Dubois was slandered for ‘quitting’ against Oleksandr Usyk after he took a knee and sat out the count for the second time during his career. This decision led to accusations that Dubois lacked the heart of a true champion, but those allegations were soon put to rest as ‘Triple D’ scored a last-second knockout win over Jarrell Miller, before upsetting the odds and becoming the first man to defeat Croatia’s Filip Hrgovic in a bid for the IBF interim title.
That belt was soon upgraded to the full world title and Dubois could not be in against a bigger name than the one he has been tasked with. In an interview with Seconds Out, David Price sided with the more proven champion and picked ‘AJ’ to get the job done inside the distance, explaining why he believes that Dubois’ durability will play a key component in the outcome.
“I think it depends on how much punishment Dubois can take early on because AJ is going to land clean, heavy shots early on. I think Dubois can take them from a concussive point of view, I think that he can take the shots and keep going, it’s whether his face will hold up. He is easy to hit with a right-hand, we saw that in the Hrgovic fight, he was catching him repeatedly with the right-hand but he was walking through them.
“I think that it is a different story with Anthony Joshua and I think that ‘AJ’ is probably going to win late on. I think that he will start well, Dubois will come back into it, couple of scares for ‘AJ’ and then I think that he [Joshua] will pull it out of the bag in the mid-to-late rounds.”
For comparison, Daniel Dubois ate an astonishing 35 power punches in the opening two rounds of his battle with Hrgovic, whilst Joshua needed to land just five power shots to knock out Ngannou and exactly 35 to stop Wallin in the fifth-round.
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