Carl Froch believes that Daniel Dubois has earned the right to some huge fights going forward.
For many years, British heavyweight Dubois was a raw work in progress. He showed himself in his early fights to have the ability to knock out any man but some also thought he displayed some mental frailties after twice taking the knee and a 10 count in two big fights.
The first of those was mitigated by a serious eye injury against Joe Joyce and he rebuilt with more solid wins before coming up against Oleksandr Usyk. Despite having his man down with what was ruled a low blow, he went on to be stopped off a jab in the 9th round, again after taking the count.
However, following that he has shown strengthened resolve to come through tough fights. Against Filip Hrgovic he took plenty of big shots but managed to whether the storm and get the stoppage win.
That came after the same happened against American Jarrell Miller who initially put plenty of pressure on Dubois, only to succumb to Dubois’s power after a fury of shots in the dying seconds of the final round.
His most impressive performance came last time out, knocking down Anthony Joshua several times on his way to a fifth round KO win and the first defence of his IBF world title belt.
Joshua is believed to want an immediate rematch but speaking on his YouTube channel, Froch thinks both Joseph Parker and Zhilei Zhang are more deserving of that fight.
“He’s not a world champion. Daniel Dubois now is the justifiable IBF world champion. He was gifted the belt, I called him a paper title but he’s beaten a two-time world champion in ‘AJ’ so he deserves his flowers, brilliant performance ironing out AJ.
The AJ rematch is the big money fight but does AJ deserve it? Dubois is going to fancy it but does ‘AJ’ deserve it? I think there are other people in line that deserve it more, Joseph Parker and Zhilei Zhang just to be a couple of them.”
