DUBOIS SET TO ENTER THE HEAVYWEIGHT HISTORY BOOKS
By Frank Warren
ON SATURDAY NIGHT, if all goes to plan, the name of Daniel Dubois will reverberate around the world.
If our man can overcome Oleksandr Usyk over in Poland, as I am confident he will, his homeward-bound baggage will include no less than three world heavyweight championship belts.
We all know Daniel will be up against it at the stadium in Wroclaw and he is a massive outsider with the bookies, but I have been in the fight-making business for a good few decades now and I tend to trust my intuition.
I don’t always get it right but, at the same time, I am not often wrong and I am convinced Daniel possesses the attributes to really rattle the champion and come away triumphant.
If he pulls it off he will become an overnight sensation and will vindicate the belief we have had in him right from the start when we signed him up back in 2017.
He jettisoned the opportunity to go to the Olympics, preferring to invest the time in a professional journey towards becoming world champion.
I’ll be honest, at the time I thought we would have been at this point before now, but a combination of two injuries and the pandemic put the brakes on a bit.
Daniel did a good impression of an unstoppable force as he bludgeoned his way through his learning fights, picking up something like 10 championship belts, starting from a WBO Youth title and Southern Area in the process.
His sole setback against Joe Joyce was unfortunate. He was, as it goes, winning on the cards but the damage inflicted by Joe to his left eye socket resulted in him making a correct decision to have himself counted out.
It was a move that saved his career, bearing in mind the information we received from specialists afterwards.
His loss saw Joe take Daniel’s place in the WBO rankings and left us to plot an alternative route back for him. We saw an opportunity with the WBA for Daniel to grab the Interim world title and then moved heaven and earth to force the issue and have him fight Trevor Bryan for the regular title.
This put Daniel in the position he finds himself in today, first in the queue to take on Usyk, as it turns out ahead of Joe who will seek to regain the WBO mandatory spot when he rematches Zhilei Zhang on September 23 at Wembley.
I have heard some people say they believe Usyk will be able to take advantage of Daniel as if he is somehow lacking in mental fortitude. I point these people in the direction of his last fight against Kevin Lerena.
After getting caught cold on the temple and his knee collapsing beneath him the first round, Daniel regathered his composure against the odds and then took out the South African with blistering power in the third.
It was a serious injury and, without outright bloody mindedness, he wouldn’t have come through such adversity to hold on to his title.
Which brings us back to this weekend and his chance to shock the world by rocking an undefeated champion. I would also suggest the form guide is a little unreliable because Usyk has not been an active fighter, having had just one fight a year as a heavyweight since moving up in 2019.
You never know when Father Time begins taking his toll on you and what we do know is that Daniel is a supremely conditioned, powerful specimen with a hurtful jab and a formidable right-hander.
Even with the elusive qualities of Usyk, it is hard to picture a scenario where he can keep Daniel at bay for three minutes of every round.
This is Daniel’s time to silence 40,000-odd Usyk fans and recapture the three world heavyweight title belts on behalf of Britain.
And, should this be the case, you can obviously rely on me not to say ‘I told you so’. Not much, anyway.
