Journalist Gareth A. Davies does not believe a rematch will happen between Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois given the outcome of their fight last month. He feels there is too much risk for Joshua to be “maintained and mauled” by IBF heavyweight champion Dubois (22-2, 21 KOs) to face him a second time.
Gareth thinks Joshua (28-4, 25 KOs) will instead wait on the outcome of the Tyson Fury vs Oleksandr Usyk rematch on December 21. If Fury loses, as most believe he will, Joshua will fight next. There is too much money available for AJ and Fury to capture for themselves not to fight.
Joshua looked out of his league last month, falling four times in his fifth knockout loss to Dubois at London’s Wembley Stadium. If that fight had been competitive, a rematch might have made sense. It wasn’t competitive, and a rematch would probably be a similar massacre.
“My sense is that it will not be,” said Gareth A. Davies to Pro Boxing fans about whether the Anthony Joshua vs. “In the end, my feeling is that they will say, ‘Let’s just wait and see what happens with Fury and Usyk.'” If Fury loses Usyk the second time, maybe we put Joshua on Fury now.
“If Fury wins, I think Fury and Usyk probably have a trilogy. That’s the feeling I get from people. My gut feeling is that he (Joshua) won’t end up beating Daniel Dubois right away, but if he does, it will probably be in february.
“Is the punch resistance gone? I don’t know about that. I think Daniel Dubois punches very hard,” said Gareth, reacting to being told that Carl Froch had commented on his belief that the punch resistance of Joshua left after watching him get eliminated by Dubois.
“He was caught early, and he spent nine minutes trying to recover and keep a place in the fight, which he did brilliantly to do. Then he threw his whole lot in the first minute of the fifth round, and then s “It’s taken. Meanwhile, it also took Daniel and caused some tremors,” said Gareth.
It’s not so much that Joshua’s punch resistance is gone, but rather, he never had it to begin with. The shots with which Dubois repeatedly hurt Joshua on September 21 would have done the same to him had he fought him earlier in his career from 2013 to 2017.
Joshua never had a good beard, but that weakness was hidden because of his promoter, Eddie Hearn, who selectively pitted him against lesser fighters. If you look at Joshua’s career resume, it’s full of beatable, very old guys.
The best opponents of Joshua’s career
– Wladimir Klitschko: 41 years old
– Andy Ruiz Jr.
– Kubrat Pulev: 39
– Oleksandr Usyk
– Francis Ngannou: 37
– Robert Helenius: 41
– Alexander Povetkin: 39 years old
– Carlos Greedy: 36 years old
– Joseph Parker
– Dillian Whyte
– Otto Wallin
“Didn’t you all get up from your seats at that moment in the fifth round and think, ‘He’s going to turn this around.’ It’s unbelievable, and he’s going to be this concussed guy talking later when he’s won the fight.’ ” Davies said, talking about the brief moment of success AJ had in the fifth round before his lights went out.
Gareth goes a little overboard, talking about Joshua backing up Dubois in the fifth round after catching him with a clean right hand. Dubois was not injured, and it was obvious that he was playing possum, trying to lure Joshua into a trap.
We saw Dubois do the same thing against Filip Hrgovic last June in Riyadh, and he destroyed him in eight rounds. Dubois took a lot more hard right hands from Hrgovic than he did against Joshua, and he held up well. The punches Hrgovic hit Dubois were almost as hard as the one AJ tagged him in the fifth.
“My personal opinion is that Joshua should sit out until Fury and Usyk have fought. That’s my view rather than taking the immediate rematch against Daniel Dubois. It’s a wise move if he’s kind of maimed and maimed another time in a second fight against Dubois,” said Gareth.
Joshua would surely be mauled in a second fight by Dubois, and it wouldn’t matter one bit if the rematch was delayed until February or March of next year. Dubois is too powerful, young and robust in the chin department for Joshua, who is aging, to defeat him.
