Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois may find themselves fighting for a world heavyweight title later in the year.
This year marks the first time the two Brits have been close to fighting given Joshua is much longer in the tooth than 26-year-old Dubois.
He won won Gold at the London Olympic Games in 2012 and then worked his way to become unified heavyweight champion by 2017. His second reign ended with a defeat to Oleksandr Usyk, then again in the rematch one a year later, but since then he has logged four solid wins, three of them by knockout over Robert Helenius, Otto Wallin and Francis Ngannou.
Dubois has had similar ups and downs in his shorter career. After racking up some early victories he took a stoppage loss to Joe Joyce in 2020. The ensuing years saw him get back to winning ways with victories over the likes of Trevor Bryan and Kevin Larena before being stopped by Usyk in 2023.
Since then he has had the two best wins of his career – one late TKO over Jarrell Miller and then an eighth-round stoppage victory over Croatian Fillip Hrgovic. That win made him the IBF Interim Champion and it is thought he could well fight Joshua for the full title this summer should Usyk be forced to vacate.
Having sparred with both men, former cruiserweight champion and current WBC Bridgerweight title holder Lawrence Okolie is well-placed to speak about what might happen in that fight. He gave his views to Seconds Out.
“Yeah they’re both good fights in different ways. Dan is a heavy puncher, really good fundamentals and slugs it out the way he did in that last fight and then ‘AJ’, accomplished, and able to do a bunch of different things in the ring, so both are great fighters.
It will be a sensational match-up, edge-of-your-seat stuff ’cause they both have the ability to stop the other one quite viscously.”
He favours ‘AJ’ to get the win but predicts trouble for the former champion if he can’t get his man out of there early.
“I think you would favour ‘AJ’ ’cause he is vastly experienced, got great speed and power, so he might be able to get the shot off quicker. If he gets a right hand off clean he can put anyone out.
The problem is if he doesn’t get him out of there straight away Dubois is always punching. We saw it against Usyk, Miller, Hrgovic, one thing he will do is bite down and keep going so it’s up to ‘AJ’ to get him under manners early and dominate or it will be a really hard fight.”
Should the fight between these two happen, Dubois has already vowed to ‘demolish’ his opponent.
