Daniel Dubois has proved doubters of old wrong by showing tremendous grit to fight through the fire and defeat both Jarrell Miller and Filip Hrgovic within the last twelve months. However, there is one man who proved to be an even harder-fought win for ‘Triple D’ and he has now offered his prediction for Dubois’ showdown with Anthony Joshua.
Dubois collided with Kevin Lerena on the undercard of Tyson Fury’s much-criticized trilogy fight against Derek Chisora back in December 2022, where Dubois was expected to make first defence of his WBA (Regular) heavyweight title with relative ease and score yet another early knockout win.
Whilst the official result of a third-round stoppage victory for the Brit would imply that all went to plan, those who witnessed the scrap will know that such a statement could not be further from the truth.
After purposefully taking a knee against Joe Joyce, Dubois unintentionally hit the canvas for the first time of his career in the opening round of his battle with the South-African, before taking a knee on two more occasions within the first three minutes, citing a knee injury as the reason but still managing to stay within the contest.
Showing the true spirit of a future champion and a glimpse of what was still to come, Dubois was able to recover in the second-round and dismantle Lerena in the third to score a much-needed victory in his most dramatic encounter, securing what turned out to be an unsuccessful shot at Oleksandr Usyk’s unified titles.
Speaking with Boxing Social, Kevin Lerena looked ahead to next weekend’s all-British heavyweight title affair but admitted that he could not pick a winner.
“It is a 50/50 fight.”
“You have got two big punchers; it is the heavyweight division. A good chin in the heavyweight division is one that doesn’t get hit, both guys can’t afford to take each other’s power punches.”
“My only thing is, leading into this fight, I believe that Daniel has had better fight preparation in the sense of Jarrell Miller, then Hrgovic and also Usyk, whilst ‘AJ’ has had Usyk, Jermaine Franklin, [Robert Helenius,] Otto Wallin and Ngannou. I wouldn’t say that the opponents have been better but I believe that “the matching in Daniel Dubois’ corner has been better preparation [than Joshua’s].”
“I think that it could be a fight of two halves in the sense of both guys going down, both guys can punch, I have never shared the ring with ‘AJ’ but it is no secret that he is a phenomenal athlete, he is a big man and he has got a long, rang right-hand. I think that is the punch for Daniel Dubois because, if you look at the Hrgovic fight, Daniel was eating a lot of right-hands. I don’t think he needs to be eating those right-hands from Anthony Joshua because he is a different type of puncher.
“The one thing I can say is that the one who wins this fight is the chin that doesn’t get chinned the most.”
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