WEMBLEY STADIUM, LONDON — Whatever Daniel Dubois goes on to accomplish in his thrillingly resurgent heavyweight career — make no mistake, there are plenty of tantalising possibilities for a 27-year-old who has been through the mill and come out a feared champion — it will be almost impossible to top Saturday night at Wembley.
In front of a UK record attendance of 96,000, the Londoner produced the performance of his life, dropping a national hero four times en route to an utterly comprehensive fifth-round knockout. Doubts over Dubois’ elite pedigree could not have been more emphatically extinguished. On the biggest stage imaginable, he produced a display for the ages.
It’s therefore perhaps slightly unfair that so much of the immediate postmortem will focus upon the battered and beaten Anthony Joshua.
WATCH: Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois replay on DAZN
“I think he’s done unbelievable,” Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn told the assembled reporters after his star fighter had departed to tend to his latest harrowing cocktail of physical and psychological pain.
“For a kid who has come off a council estate in Watford to win an Olympic gold medal, a world championship silver medal, a British title, a Commonwealth title, a world title, to completely transform British boxing to a place that we never believed it would ever be. To carry himself in such a way that inspires the next generation, that generates grassroots boxing. Saved all the gyms in lockdown, invested his own money into the gyms in lockdown…
“What he has done will never, ever be repeated. Not necessarily in the ring, but the way he’s transformed the sport; we’re all beneficiaries of it, all of us in here. Tonight wouldn’t be happening without Anthony Joshua because we wouldn’t have reached this stage. He transformed the heavyweight division in this county; he made stadium fights a thing of the norm. So, Anthony’s legacy will live on in the gyms, it’ll live on in Team GB and it will live on throughout British boxing.”
A cynic could absolutely pass all of that off as the honeyed words of a shrewd promoter telling his main man what he needs to hear at a time of crisis. But the majority of Hearn’s impassioned address undoubtedly rings true. Joshua has been a gargantuan figure in his sport like no other since winning gold at the 2012 Olympic games.
It’s why, as much as Dubois can justifiably claim to represent the future in this moment of incredible triumph, the questions over what is next for Joshua — who turns 35 next month — boomed loudest the morning after the night before.
IT’S ALL OVER🔥🔥🔥#RiyadhSeasonCard: Wembley Edition#JoshuaDubois | Live NOW on https://t.co/FoiaUucafv: Click link in bio to buy | @Turki_alalshikh pic.twitter.com/zZEm2Vufy9
— DAZN Boxing (@DAZNBoxing) September 21, 2024
MORE: Dubois demolishes Joshua in Wembley firefight
Will Anthony Joshua retire from boxing?
The message from fighter and promoter afterwards was unequivocal: absolutely not.
“Probably, you’re asking, ‘do I still want to continue fighting?'” Joshua said, pre-empting the obvious line of enquiry. “Of course I want to continue fighting. We took a shot at success and I came up short. What does that mean — we’re going to run away? We’re going to live to fight another day. That’s what I am: a warrior.”
Hearn, despite the above quotes veering into past-tense reflection, was similarly clear. Joshua is still contracted for one more Riyadh Season fight. The unspoken part was that a man who can command the purses AJ does will not be leaving that money on the table.
A few eyebrows were raised when Hearn outlined the two immediate targets: an instant rematch with Dubois or a long-awaited grudge match with Tyson Fury if the Gypsy King is beaten once again by Oleksandr Usyk in their December return.
“The rebuild at this stage… we’ve had four good wins [prior to Dubois], the last two looked really good and we got beat tonight. So, do we want to go and rebuild with another two or three fights? I don’t think so.
“We definitely have to take the right steps. It’s a very important decision because the next one could be the end of the road. You want to make sure that you’re in the right fight at the right time with the right preparation and if that involves a rebuild fight then maybe we’ll look at it. But I don’t feel like at this stage in his career he’s going to want to go through a training camp for a big fight.”
Joshua’s alliance with trainer Ben Davison that began prior to last December’s one-sided beatdown of Otto Wallin has palpably shown a far more contented fighter making improvements. Although Dubois spectacularly put the breaks on that on Saturday night, Hearn highlighted his man’s relatively newfound happiness as another reason Joshua will not want to let go of his career just yet.
How did Anthony Joshua lose to Daniel Dubois?
So much occurred as the two giant men slung bombs with abandon for 14 concussive minutes that it might be hard to know where to start with this question. Joshua was down in rounds one, three and four, punched around the ring in two and flattened in five.
In the fourth and fifth he jolted Dubois with a couple of his own booming rights and the latter success persuaded a reckless follow-up assault that Dubois reduced to smouldering ash with a beautifully crisp counter right hook.
And yet, for all the mayhem that followed, much of Team Joshua’s analysis centred on a disastrous round one, where the challenger was beaten to the jab repeatedly before winging in on a foolhardy attack that Dubois punished with interest.
“Overhand right, chin in the air, no defence. Kaboom!” Joshua told BBC 5Live afterwards, as no-nonsense with his words as Dubois had been with his fists.
“I wasn’t setting shots up. When you’re in a shootout like that, you’ve got to be a bit more sniper-esque. But when you’ve been hit a few times you’re in survival mode and you want to get him out of there.”
Davison similarly lamented an opening session where key tenets of the gameplan did not stick before Dubois slung the whole thing out of the window with his sledgehammer right to Joshua’s jaw.
“Dubois returns all the time on his jab so that was something we were looking to capitalise on. For whatever reason, things didn’t get going as we’d have liked to in the early part of the fight,” he said. “We just didn’t manage to get the things we were looking to get going, going early.
“There were a couple of very, very short spells. One was when he managed to land that right hand. There were a couple of things that we wanted to do to follow up on and he didn’t apply it the way he’s prepared to, unfortunately. But, by that point, a lot had gone on. He’s not thinking straight. It’s a very difficult pill to swallow.”
🗣️ “AJ would love to have another crack at him” @EddieHearn#JoshuaDubois #RiyadhSeasonCard pic.twitter.com/xIDxVG2xFH
— Matchroom Boxing (@MatchroomBoxing) September 21, 2024
Watching from ringside, Usyk observed that Joshua was leaning back away from Dubois’ long, heavy shots rather than using his feet to get out of range and Davison concurred that this was a major error from his fighter.
“His feet were lagging a little bit; he wasn’t as sharp on his feet. That’s something we spoke about. We wanted him to defend with his feet first in situations when Daniel was rushing in, or drop and tie up. We didn’t want him to sit there catching shots too long. Daniel is heavy-handed — that’s not a smart approach. And obviously, we didn’t want him being caught not ready and unaware. Those things unfortunately happened.”
Should Anthony Joshua retire after Daniel Dubois defeat?
Hearn earmarked February or March 2025 as the next time we can expect to see Joshua in the ring. At this time of unprecedented tumult for the heavyweight landscape, the danger is that the picture has changed so much by then that he’s been left behind.
There are no sporting reasons to run back a fight when one man was knocked down four times en route to a fifth-round loss. Davison and Joshua’s argument that first-round mistakes brought the house down is a legitimate one, but that alone is not a case for a rematch.
In normal circumstances, the vanquished man would have to box his way back into contention. But these aren’t normal circumstances: Joshua is an unparalleled box-office draw, Wembley would be sold out again in a heartbeat, and Dubois would make money beyond his wildest dreams.
The latter would also be true if DDD takes on the winner of the Usyk vs. Fury rematch, which is understandably where his sights are trained. He could definitely hurt this version of Fury and he has unfinished business with Usyk. Also, under IBF rules, he would risk being stripped of his belt if he took the Joshua rematch. Dubois has more reasons and options than most to look beyond another Joshua payday, at least in his immediate future.
Hearn noted the Fury fight is only possible for his man if ‘The Gypsy King’ is beaten by Usyk again. There will always be a market for Fury vs. Joshua, but one man stepping into the ring on the back of two consecutive defeats to face a rival bruised by his most brutal loss would make it a pale shadow of the fight it might have been. It will be a travesty if Joshua vs. Fury never happens and only slightly less of a travesty if it happens like that.
Another name sure to be thrown into the mix is Joshua’s other great theoretical adversary, Deontay Wilder. That fight could once have been for the undisputed title between two undefeated knockout artists. Wilder is now on a run of four defeats in his past five having been sickeningly knocked out by Zhilei Zhang. Heavyweight fights happening after they should is nothing new but Joshua vs. Wilder in these circumstances would make it feel like Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson met in the prime of life.
There is also a very plausible scenario where Fury and Usyk each decide to walk away after their second meeting, men in their mid-30s with nothing left to prove. That would leave Joshua to joust with a bunch of young, hungry, dangerous heavyweights. He was one of those once, but on Saturday we got a stark demonstration of how that equation can play out.
Joshua suggested afterwards he might have taken Dubois lightly. That’s not to say he did not prepare diligently — it’s just a fact of life for the ageing fighter. When you’ve seen it all, the fear you need to bottle for that extra edge doesn’t always arrive. It meant AJ was battered by a man you’d have struggled to make a case for him losing to during his championship reigns. That’s a tale as old as time in boxing and always a strong indication that it might be time to hang them up.
A level-headed assessment is that Joshua is unlikely to scale his previous heights at this point and vulnerable to suffering losses to men he’d have once wiped the floor with. Sure, an athletic specimen of his rare kind has more to offer. But it’s open to debate how much.
Amid Joshua, Davison and Hearn’s admirably unvarnished post-fight comments was one concerning section where the promoter rewrote history a little.
“I think, to be honest with you, it’s probably the only time in his whole career I’ve seen him really hurt,” Hearn said of Joshua. “You never want to carry on too long but AJ is a heavyweight who doesn’t actually have many miles on the clock.”
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Hearn clarified that he meant hurt “to the point he couldn’t get up” but this is a very high bar for a sport and a weight division full of stories of heroes who gave far more than could be reasonably asked and suffered in retirement.
For all the wider concerns around Saudi Arabia’s boxing landgrab, fighters being paid handsomely for carrying out their ominous profession is a welcome side-effect. On the other hand, there will always be financial reasons to go back to the well when common sense says otherwise. At least in Joshua’s case he has already amassed unimaginable wealth and has a sober team of loyal advisors around him.
Much of the excitement around the Riyadh Season events has centred upon many of the world’s leading heavyweights being thrown in to fight one another. Amid the 21st-century glitz, it’s felt like a throwback to the golden era of the big men in the 1960s and 1970s, where greats fought, lost and fought again.
The wince-inducing post-script to this is that Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Floyd Patterson, Ken Norton and others were all badly diminished in their later years. Frazier was mercilessly bounced off the canvas by George Foreman and Patterson suffered two blink-and-you’ll-miss-them defeats to Sonny Liston. Cleaned out, unable to continue, just like Joshua against Dubois.
But this sort of defeat, highlighted by Hearn, is not the only place where lasting damage occurs. Boxers like Joshua generally operate in a more controlled sparring environment than their predecessors. However, talk of Dubois wobbling him in a session years ago was part of a fight build-up where Joshua said they’d sparred “hundreds of rounds”. There will be other gym wars with other up-and-comers in his past. All miles on the clock.
Then think of all the times in Joshua’s career when his legs have stiffened after having his brain rattled around inside his skull. Dillian Whyte’s buzzing short left hook in 2015, his heavy knockdown against Klitschko 18 months later, the four-knockdown ordeal against Andy Ruiz Jr. and 24 rounds under the spell of Usyk’s educated fists. Dubois might have been the most brutal tormentor, but it was not his first rodeo.
The legacy Hearn spoke so passionately of will endure long before the gleam has come off the alphabet belts, long after online blowhards have finished honking that a World Championship silver medalist, Olympic gold medalist and two-time unified world heavyweight champion is somehow a “hype job”. Anthony Joshua’s post-career should be a delight to experience. Over the months ahead, those around the former champion should make sure he can enjoy it to the fullest extent.
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