Anthony Joshua weighed in at 252.3 lbs, and IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois came in at 248.4 lbs at Friday’s weigh-in for their 12-rounder this Saturday night at Wembley Stadium in London. Both fighters showed little emotion during the face-off, staring at each other with blank eyes that resembled two sharks ready for a meal.
Weight for former heavyweight champion Joshua (28-3, 25 KOs), who is still in the 250s, could be a bad thing if he gasses if he is forced into a quick fight by the young Dubois (21 years old). -2, 20 KO).
It is believed that Dubois will force Joshua into an all-out brawl from the opening bell, pushing his aging body to the limits. That might be too much for AJ, who has a lot of miles on the odometer and isn’t ready to fight this way.
If you were to create a fight in a laboratory designed to defeat Joshua, you would end up with Dubois. Of all the heavyweights in the division, Dubois is the perfect embodiment of a Joshua-destroying machine.
Joshua cannot afford to lose this fight, especially by knockout, because he is coming off a four-fight, two-year rebuilding job. He can’t do it again after a potentially devastating loss to Dubois on Saturday night. Joshua is quite rich, with a net worth of $80 million, waiting to be pushed $100 million after Saturday night.
Losing to Dubois by humiliating knockout would likely ruin what’s left of Joshua’s sanity, sending him into a mental downward spiral that would make him unfit for future fights against Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk.
Going into a dark isolation shed for four days will not help Joshua if the Dubois superior battle in the blitz would be too much for AJ.
“I do. He has the personality where I don’t think you do,” Ade Oladipo said Pro Boxing fans when asked if Daniel Dubois can mentally handle this stressful moment of fighting star Anthony Joshua in front of a massive crowd of 96,000 fans on Saturday.
“There are many young people who can put themselves on the field, and it’s the norm. There are others who just kill them and swallow them (when it comes to stress). I don’t know if it will be the phase of Dubois because he has had that kind of personality where his head is in the cloud sometimes. Maybe that’s a good thing.”
Dubois shows no emotion when under pressure. It’s like a search and destroy android with a way to go after its prey. For an older fighter like Joshua to go up against a guy like Dubois is bad news. Joshua is good with guys like Otto Wallin and Francis Ngannou, but not against an apex predator like Dubois.
“I don’t think he will do it in stages. He will go from there and feel: ‘I belong here’. I am the champion. I went to Poland,” Ade said about Dubois. “I beat Miller. I beat Hrgovic. It’s my time,” and you don’t know how to operate, and we don’t know until someone is there. I think it will do well.
“If he loses to Dubois, it will be by KO. This fight is not on points. If AJ is knocked out by Dubois, I think it’s a very difficult comeback. I wonder if AJ will want to come back. He will be 35 next month. I I wonder if he wanted to go down to the type of Jermaine Franklin, Helenius and Otto Wallin. Do you want to rebuild again?” said Hades.
Joshua is too old and has too many miles on him for another four-fight rebuild to come back from a loss to Dubois on Saturday night. Although Joshua has stated that he has “Loads” of time in his career, he will change his mind if Dubois destroys him on Saturday night.
