DANIEL DUBOIS HAS BEEN BRANDED A QUITTER AFTER TAKING A KNEE TWICE - BUT AFTER BOUNCING BACK FROM TWO TOUGH LOSSES, CAN HE PROVE HE HAS OVERCOME HIS MENTAL DEMONS AND BEAT ANTHONY JOSHUA AT WEMBLEY?

Daniel Dubois will take on fellow Brit Anthony Joshua later this month
The Wembley fight is the biggest all-British heavyweight clash in over 30 years
Dubois has won his last two fights after previously being branded a 'quitter'

Out with the old, in with the new? Anthony Joshua is set to face Daniel Dubois in front of a potential record crowd at Wembley Stadium on September 21 in what could be dubbed the biggest British heavyweight fight since Frank Bruno vs Lennox Lewis in 1993.

With the two Londoners boasting a combined knockout ratio of over 90 per cent and only six out of their combined 54 fights going the distance, there promises to be fireworks.

Dubois, who snubbed the 2020 Great British Olympic team in order to throw himself into the fire of heavyweight boxing, aged just 19, is blessed with explosive power having secured 20 of his 21 victories by way of knockout.

However, a question mark remains over his mental resilience after he took the knee in his first career defeat to Joe Joyce when he received a fractured left eye socket from a relentless Joyce jab. As for the reason for quitting, Dubois' promoter, Frank Warren, cited that doctors after the fight said that Dubois could've permanently damaged his sight had he stayed in the ring.

Speaking to TNT Sports shortly after the fight, Warren said: 'There was bleeding of the retina. So he basically risked a detached retina. He did the right thing.'

A reasonable explanation to the layman on the street, but not to fighters, many of whom took to social media to publicly criticise Dubois.

Matthew Macklin, a former middleweight world title challenger and pundit tweeted immediately after the fight: 'There's no nice way to say this but Dubois quit. Got hit with a clean jab on a damaged eye and sat it out. He's young but if you've got the quit in you then it's always gonna be a doubt over him.'

Rival promoter Eddie Hearn, who also promotes Joshua, speculated on Instagram that Dubois' corner team didn't trust the strength of their fighter's mentality, saying: 'I think it was about the fourth or fifth round I thought, "He don't fancy this".

'He went to the corner and the corner team were saying things like, "Come on! This is the fight game!"

'I thought, "Calm down, it's only the fourth round." And I think they just knew he was mentally weak. I'm not sure?'

As for Dubois' take, in an interview with TNT Sports immediately after the fight when asked what had happened, he responded: 'What can I say he caught me with a good jab and his jab was pretty accurate and you know I couldn't see out the eye.'

He did very few interviews in the weeks that followed on from the fight, but speaking in an interview months later with Frank Warren's Queensberry promotions YouTube Channel he said: 'I took a knee and the rest is history, but after all that, I'm not going to let this stop me, set me back, hold me back.'

'When I come back, I want to see them same people and I want to get in the ring with them, and show them how much of a quitter I am.'

Dubois did come back and strung together four consecutive knockout victories before facing the undefeated Oleksandr Usyk, almost three years on from the Joyce fight.

Despite giving a fairly strong account of himself during the fight and even flooring Usyk with a punch that was controversially deemed a low blow, some speculated again that Dubois had consciously remained on one knee and accepted the count after going down in the ninth. Whilst only Dubois knows for sure, the question marks are still there.

He put some of these doubts to bed by going to the trenches to take victory in a gruelling fight with Filip Hrgovic in June, a world level fighter ranked in the Ring Magazine's top 10 heavyweights. Whether this victory proves that Dubois is truly over his past surrenders remains to be seen.

Perhaps Dubois could turn the tables on Joshua, who himself, was accused of 'quitting' by Simon Jordan, referring to when Joshua spat out his gum shield in the seventh round of his US debut in Madison Square Garden against Andy Ruiz Jnr, before being counted out in what was the first loss of his professional career.

Whilst Dubois' defensive skills have looked shaky at times, there is no doubt that he has the power to knock out any heavyweight should he land cleanly. Could this fight be a case of who lands first wins?

Given the explosive power of both fighters, the opportunity to 'quit' may not even present itself as the fight could be over with one punch.

If Joshua opts to sit back in the early rounds and slowly pick off Dubois' attacks with the jab in a similar manner to Joyce, this could test the younger man's stomach for the fight once more.

But if Dubois can prove that he is over these mental hurdles, he has every chance of defeating AJ and showing that he is the future of the heavyweight division.

2024-09-19T21:23:45Z dg43tfdfdgfd